A New Light
by foxworth
Summary: What if there was more to the war than just light and darkness? If there was a whole part of the Kingdom Hearts universe just waiting to be tapped? Read on as Riku, with the help of a new friend, delves deeper into the mystery of this new power.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this piece, Kingdom Hearts related or otherwise.

Well, my first fanfic! It's great to be here folks. Well, I know this is a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, but through the course of this story I might take things in a slightly different direction, add elements of other stories that I always thought would work appropriately within the KH universe. This takes place right after KHII, with all of the main characters safe at home. So, enjoy the story!

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Chapter 1: The Event

Riku's PoV

I still can't believe that after everything that's happened, we're all still together. It's like over the past few years, there have been times where I thought that I would never see this place again, that these islands were just a bygone memory that I could never reach again. I guess anything really is possible, huh? I've been thinking that more and more lately. That's why I had that talk with Sora; of course, it's also when this whole mess began.

We had just finished school (god, school. Never thought I would say that without a grimace on my face), and I had asked Sora to meet me at our island, where we used to play when we were kids. Took him for damn near ever to show up, as usual. Knowing Sora, he probably was helping Kairi out with her homework, again. Anyway, by the time he finally shows up, the sun's just beginning to set on the water, and I'm leaning on the paupou tree like always, waving for him to come over. Of course, he runs over as fast as he can, huffing and out of breath but still as bright and cheery as ever. I've gotta say, if there's one thing that can bonehead can do, he can always cheer me up out of my over thinking moods.

"Heh, Hey Riku. Suh, Sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Kairi need some help with her trig homework." I knew it! Typical, run off to the girlfriend whenever you get the chance. He doesn't even take trig!

"Mm, it's fine. At least you showed. I really needed to talk to you."

"Oooookaaay, what about?"

I looked out at the horizon, took a moment to gather my thoughts one last time. "How long has it been since we got back?"

He took a moment to think, like he was trying to remember exactly how many minutes since we walked through that Door to the Light. "I dunno. A month or two, maybe?"

"It's been three. Three months since we came back to normal life."

Sora jumped right up next to me on the tree; he knew this was going to take a while. "Huh. You don't say?"

"Yeah. Man, it all seems so surreal now, huh? Looking back, we're lucky we weren't killed, huh?"

Sora was still as confused as ever; as direct as he was, he was horrible at trying to understand anything resembling subtlety. "Yeah, I suppose so. What makes you think that though?"

I kept staring at the horizon, refusing Sora any chances at eye contact; if I had to say everything I needed to while looking at those big blue innocent eyes of his, I was going to lose my train of thought for sure. "Well, I've just been thinking. While we were going through it all, all that light and darkness stuff made perfect sense. But remember all that stuff King Mickey said, when we were facing Xemnas?"

"Something about how light and darkness are each half of everything, right?"

"Yeah, but I can't help but feel that it's not that simple. I mean, there's a little bit of both in each from what I can tell. This is the realm of light, but darkness exists here just about everywhere, and it looked like it was the same way in the realm of darkness, right?"

Sora scratched his head, trying to keep up with my train of thought. The poor guy, he may get better grades than me in most classes, but everyone knows when it comes to a class discussion or an English paper, I'm the deeper thinker. "I guess…"

So, I kept feeding him my train of thought, in hopes of finally getting him to think about it all. "And when I was stuck with Xehanort's face, I used the darkness, but always for good. So that means that one doesn't have to be bad, or even good to use the light or darkness, right?"

He looked at me with this scared look on his face, like a puppy who can't understand why his kid is growing taller. I had never seen him like that before. "I don't know. You're starting to freak me out a little, Riku. Where are you going with this?"

"I'm saying that as much as the King seems to know about light and darkness, I think that there's something more to all of it, something none of us can even imagine. There's just no way it's as simple as we've been thinking." I got up from my spot and walked to the edge of the land, arms outstretched at the world. "And it's only a matter of time before someone finds out what it is and how to use it to endanger the worlds again."

Sora got up and stood right next to me. "Endanger the worlds", now that was something Sora could wrap his head around. "Don't worry about it Riku. We've faced Heartless and Nobodies down, and I'm sure that whatever comes at us next, we'll face it down too. Together." He put his hand on my shoulder, for reassurance more than anything else. "I'm sure of it."

I smiled and closed my eyes, taking in the moment. For all his simplicity, Sora was always there for me, and he always knew how to chase away the creeping doubts in my mind. I really needed that right now, for someone to just get me past all the thinking and tell me that things would be fine. Good old Sora. "You're right. We've done it before and we can do it again. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." He looked up at sky, eyes bright with that undying spark of hope we all knew him so well for. Suddenly, he frowned, turned to me, and pointed outward. "Is that a star? This early in the evening?"

I followed his gaze, and saw that he was right; just above the sun, right where the sky turned a hazy orange, a little pinprick of light was hanging in the distance. It almost seemed like it was pulsing, like a little heartbeat. As I watched the pulsating light, I noticed that, with every pulse it seemed to get a little bit bigger. By this time, it looked about the size of a small golf ball, and it was growing quickly – too quickly.

As soon as I realized this, I turned to Sora so quickly, he flinched. "Sora, we've gotta get out of here, now!"

As usual, he had no idea what I meant. "What are you talking about?"

No time to explain, just had to grab him and run."It's coming this way, just run!"

Grabbing his hand, I dragged Sora towards the bridge. If we hurried, we could get to the boats and get a safe distance away before impact. About halfway across, I jumped off the bridge, with me making a perfect landing while Sora fell to the ground in a heap.

"Riku, calm down, just tell me what's going on!" He looked up at me like I had gone absolutely out of my mind.

"You'll understand in a minute, just trust me on this one!" I pulled him to his feet, got into the boat, and grabbed the oars. It took some doing, along with some barking on my part at Sora to keep rowing, but we managed to row far enough just in time to see it fly by.

I couldn't get a clear view of whatever the thing was; it was moving way too fast. I was only able to see a glimpse of some sort of red and yellow chunk of something before it smashed right into the tree house in the center of the island. The impact was incredible, something I had never seen before. The crash created a series of fireworks of every color imaginable, covering the entire island. Still, even if the fireworks weren't enough to impress, the impact of the thing smacking into the trunk of the tree was enough to create a "BOOM!" loud enough to send waves coursing through the ocean. Thank god Sora was quick on his feet when it came to danger, or we probably would have flipped over right then and there. He managed to keep us afloat by rowing his side of the boat to compensate for the waves; I would have joined in, but I was far too preoccupied with what was happening on the island. The only really strange part of it all (if there is anything that isn't strange about your childhood playground being demolished by a giant hunk of…something) was that even when the fireworks subsided, the colors they made didn't; they just floated a few feet above the sand, forming a psychedelic cloud over the island.

All of a sudden, Sora yanked my oar out of my hand and started rowing back towards the island, an oar in each hand and a smile beaming across his face.

"C'mon Riku, we've gotta check it out!" he hollered. "This is it, this is what you were talking about. And it's already found us, we'd be crazy not to go!"

I thought about speaking out, telling him he was crazy and that we had to tell someone first, but then I stopped and smiled. Sora was right then, and he was right now. He and I could take this together, no matter what. I knew it. "Alright then. Full speed ahead!"

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The King's PoV

Gosh, things were just goin' great, better than they had in a long, long time. I was back home at the castle, Minnie was as swell as ever, and best of all, I could finally get back into some routine around here. After years of fighting off all sorts of creeps over the years, it's nice to just kick back, relax, and sign off a whole bunch of administration forms. This stuff used to be a little dry, but in comparison to being stuck in the Realm of Darkness it's a breeze! Besides, I'm a king; if I didn't take care of all the important stuff, who would? It had been piling up since I left, after all…

Anyway, I was in my study, just finishing off my stack of salary approvals and was getting ready to start approving a new well on the castle grounds when I heard a couple of high pitched voices pipe up from the other side of the door.

"You're Majesty, You're Majesty!" "You gotta come quick! It's, it's…just hurry!"

Well, that sure wasn't a good sign. From the sound of it, there were only two people it could be: the castle mechanics, Chip and Dale. They've always been a bunch of chatterboxes, and if one of them was speechless for once, something had to be up.

"Ok fellas, I'll be over in a bit," I hollered. Just had to put a signature down, stamped it with seal to finish off, and off I went.

The minute I made it out the door, I started getting down to business. "Ok boys, what's all the fuss about? I'm a little busy…," only to see the little chipmunks already down at the other end of the hall. Chip stopped at the end of the hall, jumping up and down to get my attention.

"C'mon, Your Majesty! It's the sensors, they're going haywire!"

The sensors! That couldn't be good. When Sora and Riku got back to their worlds, we set up a couple of precautions to ensure their safety. Sora was one of the last Keyblade masters left, after all, with Riku holding a heck of a potential for wielding one of his own; we were going to risk anything happening to them now, not when we were so close to building up some recruits and keeping the keys going. One of those precautions was the sensors, a buncha Gummi Ships on autopilot around the islands, recording any and all spikes of light or dark energy. Chip and Dale had built all of the equipment themselves, from scratch; for something bad to happen to that kind of cutting-edge gummi tech could only spell trouble for all of us.

Anyway, by the time I got down to the gummi workshop, things were kinda in an uproar. Alarms were going off everywhere, the steam vents had filled the room with a fog, and the machinery was puffing away like it had been scared into some strange marathon, with all them trying to fix the problem at once. It took some doing, trying to get past all those crazy robots and the steam, but I managed to find a way to the control board, where Chip and Dale were already waiting for me.

"Golly, things really are getting outa hand here. Well, what's all the ruckus about?" I had to shout just to be heard over all the commotion around us.

"Well, uh, you see, uhhhh…" I could barely hear them, but it seemed like they were a little in over their heads. After a moment, Chip pulled Dale around to face away from me and the two chattered away at each other. It took them a few seconds to agree on how to describe what had happened, but once they did, they turned back to me and stood up as straight as they could. "Ok," Chip said. "Well, you know how the sensors usually show two colors on a screen, white to show the levels of light and black for the levels of darkness?

"Yeah, sure fellas." To be honest, it was the only thing about the sensors I did understand.

"Well, a few minutes ago, the power levels just started spiking like crazy. And then…well, see for yourself. Dale?"

Dale turned around and pressed a few buttons on the board, making a screen pop up just behind it. Immediately, the screen showed a bar, filling up to show the loading process. 30 percent, 65 percent, 100 percent…

Whoa.

There was now other way to put it: the entire screen was covered in a swirling mass of rainbow-like colors. The dull flickering of the black and white sections had been replaced with an overflowing, all-consuming wave of colors. Any color you coulda imagined, it was in there; clouds of light blue, spinning spheres of orange, veins of red spilling out, and throughout it all, more than any other color, was a harsh, pulsing, blinding yellow. It was beautiful, but terrifying too, like it was going to come out and consume everything in its path.

"Do ya see now?" Chip shrieked. "We've got no idea what it means, there's no record of anything like it in our files! What are we gonna do?"

Well, if the islands were in trouble, no doubt the kids were right in the middle of it. I had no choice; I had to get down there and see why the ruckus down there was causing so much ruckus up here. "Get the Gummi Ship ready, fellas. Looks like they need my help."

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Lord, Mickey's hard to write! I love writing for Riku though, lets me go as deep as I want.

Well, that's it for now! let me know what you think, and I'll try and have another chapter done as soon as I can!


	2. Chapter 2

Well, I've got time, and I've more I'd like to do. The ball's rolling, so I might as well see where it goes. Enjoy!

Kingdom Hearts. Never owned it, probably never will.

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Chapter 2: Deep into the Fog

?

_NO!_

_Shutupshutupshutupshutup! (I can't do it, Mom, I just-) No, not again. Have to control it, have tooo-(I can do it, I can fix it, I can be good, just let me get-) Stop. Can't let it out, shut it down, shut it down…_

_Fear. No. Sleep. Hide. Wait…_

_Rest. Heal. Safe.

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_Riku's PoV

By the time we got to the shore, those colors had spread all over the place. It was weird though, as much as they had spread around the island, none of them had actually mixed together. A yellow haze made up most of the fog, with sparks and lines of other colors almost swimming through it. It was like looking at one of those old war films, with the grenade gas and the debris from the blast everywhere.

I was a little nervous, I'll admit, but it was Sora who was the one who was freaking out. "Gee, I-I don't know if this is such a good idea Riku. Maybe we should have gone to get some backup." A hiss of some sort came from in the cloud, and Sora actually jumped a mile. "Actually, h-how about this: You st-stay here and start looking, and—and I go find Kairi." He jumped to get the paddle, but of course I was faster, holding it above my head where he couldn't reach.

"Uh-uh, you're staying right here." Sora kept jumping at the oar, trying to grasp it with the desperation of a dying man. "What's the matter with you? You're always so gung-ho when it comes to adventures, so adventure on!"

He stopped jumping and looked down at the ground, avoiding eye contact. "I-I don't know, Riku. Something's not right about this…What makes you so sure whatever's in there won't just take us out?"

That wasn't a good sign. Either Sora had forgotten everything we'd been up against the past few years, or something was really wrong with him. He was never such a coward. Well, whatever it was, Sora and his current lack of a spine would have to wait. "Come on, fraidy cat, you're coming with me whether you like it or not. Or would you rather wait for something to come 'take you out'?"

"Well…" And he actually started inching towards the boat!

Well, that did it. This dope was going to have to man up and dive in. "C'mon!" I grabbed him by the arm, whipped him around so he was standing between me and the rest of the island, and pushed him forward. I also took the time to summon my Way to The Dawn blade too, just in case I told myself. So, with one last push and something resembling a confident stride, we marched into the yellow unknown.

…

"Ok, we're lost, and I mean really lost! This is all your fault you know, if only you'd let me get someone, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

"Shut up, Sora! I'm doing the best I can!" We'd been wandering around the island for hours now, and we still hadn't found anything that could tell us where we were, much less what had happened. Anything resembling a landmark on the island had been completely demolished, to the point where we'd be lucky to find a piece of wood or a tree limb longer than my arm. The colors had started to shift too; the yellow, while still present in some small wisps, had mostly subsided to a dark shade of red that kept us from seeing anymore than a few feet in front of us. It had gotten hot too, really hot, and that certainly wasn't helping Sora's mood.

"I can't believe I've been following you're stupid, stupid behind all over this damn piece of sand all day! Thanks to you, Kairi's probably worried sick about me!" He kicked a piece of our old tree house out of the way, apparently just for the heck with it. Man, Sora was not coping well with the situation: he never swears.

"Geez, just calm down, alright? We'll be fine, just-"

Suddenly, he whipped around and started tearing into me like he had been waiting all day for the chance. "Don't you tell me to calm down! You have no IDEA what I've had to go through because of you!" I jumped back, but he kept coming at me, letting out everything he had apparently been holding back since we first left home. "You disappear without a trace, you go crazy with some "open your heart to the darkness" crap, and you send me on a wild goose to find you WHEN YOU KNOW WHERE I AM THE WHOLE TIME! Calm down? Oh, I'm perfectly calm!" He summoned his Keyblade and held it over his head, looking like some holy terror. "I'm freaking serene! But you won't be in a minute, you bastard!"

He swung down hard, with all of his might. I only managed to bring my blade just in time to block him, but the force of the blow was enough to knock me down onto my knees. And he still kept swinging again, and again, and again…

Well, this is it, I thought. Done in by my own best friend. And why? Because he was right, because I had screwed up, and there was no way I could make up for it. I had been kidding myself. Oh well, time stop fighting then.

"No!"

Just then, a bright flash came from above, engulfing everything in sight. When it finally faded, a circle of land had been completely cleared around me. Sora had been pushed to the edge of the circle, and laid crumpled in a heap. All of the fog had been cleared to the edges of the circle, though it looked like some of the individual veins of color were trying to worm their way back in.

And in the center of the circle, watching us with all the vigilance of a hawk, Keyblade in hand, was the King himself.

"Sorry if I interrupted something fellas, but it looked like you needed my help."

* * *

Mickey's PoV

It sure is a good thing I got there when I did. Sora looked like he was half ready to kill Riku – Riku, his best friend! I guess all that ruckus back at the castle was really more than just ruckus.

Well, either way, my Keyblade's light seemed to do the trick. The fog had backed off, and Sora was, while groggy, less gung-ho for a beating. Once he and Riku were separated, it was only a few moments before Riku woke up.

"Your…Your Majesty? What…What are you…doing here?"

"Well gosh, Riku, you didn't think we'd just leave two powerful Keyblade wielders alone on a world without keeping an eye on you, did we? I came as soon as we found out about the meteor."

"The…the meteor?"

"The rock that broke your big tree house."

"Oh yeah, that makes sense, I guess." He got to his feet, then came over and put out his hand. "Thanks, Your Majesty."

I chuckled a little, and shook his hand. " Don't mention it bud. So, any idea why your best friend was attacking you?"

"I have no idea. We had been looking around the island, and he just got scared, then mad, then…"

"Hm." I look around a bit, justa get an idea of where we were. The fog at the edge of our little clearing was starting to come back in, but it seemed…different. I coulda sworn that red stuff seemed darker now.

"Hey Riku, isn't the fog different on the outside?"

"…Yeah, I did notice that. It's got more yellow than red towards the edge of the island. Why?"

"I think the fog, whatever it is, is messing with our hearts. It would explain why Sora went ballistic on you, wouldn't it? And you said he was scared earlier, in the yellow, right?"

Riku's eyes widened as he started putting two and two together. "The colors make us feel different things! Red is anger; Yellow, fear…"

"We'd better keep them away from us. Who knows what those other colors could do to us. Or Sora…"

"We'd better get going then. C'mon, Your Majesty, help me get one of his arms."

So, we got Sora, one of us on each arm, and started pulling him towards the center of the island. It's a good thing I came from the air, otherwise we'd have no idea how to find it in the first place. My Keyblade managed to keep the fog back, so long as I held it up and kept it going.

It seemed like it took us forever, trying to make it through that red muck. I was half ready to switch my Keyblade to the other arm, I was so tired, but we finally made it to the center of the crash; the base of the tree house. The whole thing looked like it sorta collapsed onto itself, with all of the leaves that weren't completely burned scattered around the crater along with these huge tree limbs. What was left of the trunk was just barely a stump, with a jagged edge all around it. Weird though, we knew it had to be hollow because there was a faint, dark blue glow coming from inside.

"Your Majesty, do you think you could take a look inside, see what it is? My blade doesn't seem to hold back the colors, and you may need to."

"Alright. Hold on, I'll be back in a jiffy." I put Sora's arm down (poor kid, the colors must've really done a number on him) and hopped up onto the side of the trunk. I climbed up the stump, looked over into the hollow, and managed to swing my Keyblade over on the other side to get some of the color out of the way and get a better look. And boy, what I saw you wouldn't believe.

"Riku! Riku! You've got come see this, now!"

He put Sora down and jumped up next to me. "What is it?"

"Look." I pointed into the pit, right at the source of the light, the source of this entire mess: a kid lying asleep in the center of the tree.

* * *

Riku's PoV

That kid looked like he couldn't have been much older that me, maybe 16 or 17. He had this short blond hair, with a weird split right down the middle of his hair that made it fall either to the left or the right, which seemed strange seeing as he had fallen from the sky. I mean, he should have been hurt, or at least scuffled by the fall, but he looked like he had just been sleeping this whole time. He had these strange clothes too, a collared button-down shirt over a tee shirt and jeans. One thing was for certain, he wasn't from around here, or anywhere I had ever been for that matter. Something about him…I don't know why, but I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

"Whatdaya think, Riku? Should we see if we could help'em?"

"What?...Oh, yeah, yeah, we should help him out. I'll go get him."

"Wait, don't go in until we're sure it's-"

It was too late though, I had already jumped over the side and into the pit. And the minute my feet touched the ground, the kid's eyes popped open.

"_Fear. Compassion. Love."_

I was not expecting that at all. His voice just seemed to have this…unearthly tone to it, like some sort of magic was laced into it. I jumped back a bit, waiting to see what would happen. He just stayed on the ground, eyes fixed on me but otherwise no movement at all. Once I saw the kid wasn't going to hurt me or anything, I started to just inch forward. The kid immediately jumped to his feet and huddled against the side of the hollow with his back to me.

"No no, it's okay. I don't want to hurt you. I'm here to help you."

"Hel—Help me?"

That sounded better, more normal than before. Maybe I just imagined the voice before. A yellow glow was starting to come from his hands, which I took to mean that he was scared. He certainly looked scared besides that. It was like he had no idea what had just happened to him. Alone in a strange land; I can definitely sympathize.

"That's right, help you. Just let me see you, make sure you're alright-"

"N-no. Nono, don't. Ha-have to con-control it, have to control…"

"It's alright. I'll help you make sure you don't lose control again." I was barely an inch away from him now. "Is that what happened? You lost control?" I made to take hold of his hand. "Let me help you-"

But the minute I touched his hand, he whipped it away and looked me in the eyes. His eyes were blue, but the pupils weren't black; they were filled with a swirling mass of yellow and red.

"_No! Get Away, GET AWAY!"_

And the world exploded in a flash of yellow.

* * *

Whew! That was intense to write! I'm trying to lay the tracks for future chapters, so let me know if you find them, and what you think of where they seem to be going. Thanks to the 5 people who have read Chapter 1 so far!


	3. Chapter 3

Wow, people really like my work! 21 people in 3 days, what can I say?

Well, the show must go on!

Disclaimer: What can be owned: Kingdom Hearts. What I myself own: zip, nada, goose eggs.

* * *

Chapter 3: The End of the Battle

Mickey's PoV

It all happened so fast. There was this bright flash of yellow light, and next thing I know, I'm being thrown against the nearest tree and Riku's flying into the air like a bottle rocket. I managed to jump up and catch him—yes jump, Master Yen Sid taught me more than just Keyblade stuff ya know—and get him down to earth safely. Gosh he was heavy, though. Anyway, once I made sure Riku was a-ok, I turned back to where the blast had come from. Most of the stump was gone by now, with a good chunka the dirt below it gone too. The kid was floating about ten feet off of the ground, with huge globes of red and yellow floating around his hands, which were growing in strength and creating a storm around them. His eyes…I wasn't even sure the kid had eyes anymore, there was just this red glow coming from where they should have been. He looked like he was rambling; his mouth was moving constantly without a single pause.

"_Nononono its ok Mom I can fix it I fix things always fix and control fix and control…_"

Of course, I really didn't give a hoot what he was rambling at the moment; he had hurt my friends, and it was time to take him down, one way or another. "Mister, I don't know what your problem is, but you don't just come here and start hurting people and get away with it!"

I rushed up to him, Keyblade in hand, and got my best swing ready, but he was already a step ahead of me. Just when I was about to knock him silly, a huge yellow tentacle, like something from a horror movie, came out of one of his hand globes and knocked me aside like I was a fly at a picnic. It hurt too, in more ways than one; the impact caused images of my time in the Realm of Darkness to flash through my head. The darkness, the loneliness, the never-ending searches for someone, _anyone_…ugh, focus! That was just the yellow stuff talking!

Anyway, as soon as I shook the images out of my head, I got right back up and tried again. But no matter what angle I came from, it was always the same; I'd get smacked in the gut with one of the many tendrils now surrounding the kid.

"_You can't break me Mom I'm stronger I'm a superman no good no evil just live just survive…_"

Of course! If I used the light, the good power from my Keyblade like before, it just might be enough to cancel out his psycho powers all together. I just hoped it didn't kill him; all that power, without so much as a stick for a weapon…there could be more like him for all we know.

"All right, you crazy dummy, you asked for it!"

Standing a good distance away from him, I simply raised my Keyblade, aimed at the kid…and the light shot out like a bullet. That oughta do it, or at least I thought it would.

Instead, the minute the ray of light came close to him, it stopped in its tracks and split into several different streams of light, each a different color, each streaming in a different direction.

"_You think you can screw with me with your mind games I grew up fighting those mind games you throw it at me and I'll throw it right back…_"

He turned to me, and sent a tentacle straight at me, this one full of red streaks. It slammed me into the ground, injecting me with the burning red and wrapping itself around me like a boa constrictor. In moments, I could barely breathe, let alone fight.

"_You don't get it you just don't get it I know how to fight I live I survive you're dead AND I'M NOT!_"

* * *

Riku's PoV

…Man, that kid can pack a punch. Gotta keep a clear head around him next time that happens.

In any case, when I finally came to, things had gotten pretty ugly. The King was down for the count, and the kid was not looking too happy. He was descending towards the King, which couldn't be anything good. I got out my blade, and started running over.

"…_I live I survive you're dead AND I'M NOT!_"

I got there just in time to block his yellow arm from crushing the King into dust. Even with that small beam of yellow, it took all my strength to slow him down. Once the beam stopped moving, it just faded away, and it was just him and me.

"Ok, you really need to stop doing that."

"_Fight survive have to win only way can't stop…_"

The poor guy, I couldn't imagine what could have made him like this. "I know it seems hard, but you have to stop. Can't you see you're hurting him?"

When he heard that, it obviously affected him; the red glow covering his eyes started to fade away, letting tears stream down his face. "_Hu_r_-_Hurt him?"

His voice was getting back to normal. Good, that was a good sign. I was getting through to him. "You don't have to keep fighting. Just calm down, and we'll do whatever we can to make you ok, alright?"

He started cradling his head, like it would explode if he let go. "No, no, no one can stop it, no one knows how. Only me. Me alone, always alone…"

It was heartbreaking to see him like this. I had only met him a few minutes ago, but I felt like I understood everything about him. He needed us.

"I know what it's like to be alone too. Let me help you. Please. I'll keep you safe." I reached out and touched his hand, took it away from his head and held it in my hand. "I promise."

He looked at me again, our eyes making contact for the first time. His eyes…they were a bluish green, but the pupils were filling with more of his colors, changing them from black to a dark blue. And then he uttered 3 simple, profound words that would leave me wondering for days to come.

"_Compassion. Love. Hope._"

And then he collapsed into my arms.

...

A week later, he still hadn't woken up. I managed to convince Sora and the King to let him stay with me instead of being taken back to the castle and analyzed. We still had no idea who he was, or where his power had come from, but they trusted me to handle him if the situation went out of control again; after all, I was the only one who could get through to him in the first place.

So I took him back to my house, where I lived all alone. After we all disappeared a few years back, my parents had eventually lost hope and moved away, who knows where. The house was still there though, so I stayed there in my old room while working on my studies. I let the kid sleep in my parents' old room, where he could still get plenty of sunshine when he woke up.

School had been closed until further notice in light of what had happened. Apparently some smaller chunks of the rock he fell to earth in had broken off and landed on other islands, one of them demolishing the school building. I would have gone to see it, but to be honest I didn't care; it gave me more time to take care of him.

Every day, I'd make sure he was doing alright, make sure he wasn't getting any worse. About once a day I'd go out into town to get more food, and when I came back I would sit next to his bed and tell him about any news I had heard.

"They've started rebuilding the tree house you know, on a different island. I don't know, I think they just want to make sure kids around here still have a place to go and play, to get away from everything. Lord knows they need to after all the trouble your arrival caused." I stopped for a moment, just watching him breathe. I know this sounds weird, but it almost seemed like my talking to him was making him better. He had this peaceful, serene look to him that I just couldn't get out of my head.

"They don't know about you, you know. The others, I mean. Sora knows of course, he was there, he saw you after you fell, and I let him tell Kairi, but to everyone else, what happened was just a freak meteor shower. They have no idea that you exist." I waited a little while longer, waiting to see if that would provoke any sort of reaction. Nothing. Just that same sweet look on his face. I was starting to become afraid he would never wake up. But why? Who was he to me? I didn't understand why I was feeling this way.

"Please wake up. I know what happened was a big strain, but you can't just give up. There are people counting on you, I'm counting on you, to wake up. There are so many questions you could help us answer. Why you can do what you do, where you come from, what it means for all of us, what you mean to all of us. What you mean to me. We all need you, so just try to wake up."

I looked closer at him, checking to see if he was still breathing alright. His breath was so soft, I had to get really close just to tell. I put my ear right near his mouth. Yeah, still breathing. Thank goodness.

I turned to look at his face. He was barely an inch away, and he was even better looking than he seemed before. There wasn't a hint of malice or pain at all, just a look of peace. It was beautiful.

Then, before I even knew what I was doing, my lips touched his, and I kissed him. Just a light kiss, barely even there, but enough so that I quickly realized what I was doing and pulled back. What had just happened? Focus, Riku, focus. You're not thinking straight, you never do around him. It was nothing, nothing at all.

Suddenly, the strangest thing happened; he turned over onto his side. I watched in amazement as he slowly yawned and sat up in the bed, looking at me with those big green eyes.

"Hi, Riku."

I didn't know what to say. "H-Hi. H-How do you know my name?"

"That's part of how the colors work. I read your colors, I know you, or at least parts of what makes you you, maybe even better than you know yourself."

Ok, the color stuff was enough to bring me back down to reality. I got a grip on myself and asked him calmly, "Who are you?"

"My name's Fox. And judging by what little I can remember, we've got a lot to talk about."

"Ye-Yeah. I-I guess we do."

* * *

Whew, that was a hard chapter to get down! And yes, I know I've been advised to keep things canonical, and I am, but as I said before I'm taking things on a bit of a curve. It all makes sense once you see the later chapters I've got in mind, I assure you.

Please, enjoy, review (I really do encourage that you do), tell your friends, just have fun with it!


	4. Chapter 4

I thought I'd wait a while before posting again, but gosh darn it, this is just too much fun!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything even remotely related to Kingdom Hearts.

* * *

Chapter 4: Questions

Riku's PoV

"Hey Riku, is there a town or a marketplace or something we can go to? I'm starving, and I think I need to be around people."

This was just so surreal. This kid, Fox, was just so…calm about everything. Here he was, waking up in a strange land with no one he knows here with him, and he's asking about going to lunch like he's done it everyday of his life.

"Uh, yeah, there's a marketplace just down the road from here. You sure you wanna come?"

"Well, let me see…" He looked around the bed, trying to find something. "Do you know what time it is?"

I had already checked the clock on my way to the room; I wanted to know what time it was when he woke up. "It's about quarter till 1. Why?"

"Good, good. Lunch time, lots of people getting food. Sounds perfect. When can we leave?"

I just couldn't get over how calm he was. He had this soft smile on his face the whole time, as if this was the best place he could ever possibly be.

Wait a minute, what was I doing? I didn't know a thing about this Fox guy, and instead of asking questions, we were making plans for lunch! He had this effect, you know, you couldn't think about the task at hand, he was always so happy and innocent looking.

"N-Now wait just a minute? First of all, where the hell did you come from? And all that color stuff, what was that? Can you still do it?"

Hearing this, Fox's head lowered as his smile disappeared. The look on his face was that of someone with a huge burden to carry. "I'll explain when we get there. But please, let's go now. I don't do well when I'm alone."

With such a dramatic change in tune like that, how could I say no? He obviously had his reasons. "Ok, Fox. Let's go now."

His smile returned, and he seemed perkier than ever. "Ok, race you to the door!" He immediately jumped out of bed and ran out the door.

Heh, funny guy, I thought. Tall too, taller than me. Well, he seems nice, I may grow to like him. But then I remembered the day he arrived, babbling and uncontrollable, even to himself. It sent a shiver down my spine. Who was this guy?

…

By the time we got to the marketplace, it was 1 o' clock, meaning the official "lunch hour" was over. There were still plenty of stragglers trying to get their meals though, enough to form a bit of a crowd between stores. There were merchants everywhere, all calling out their wares in loud, sometimes hoarse voices. It didn't matter how crowded or noisy it was though, Fox was still happy. In fact, I'm pretty sure those were the qualities he was looking for; the minute he saw the marketplace, his smile grew to an all out grin.

"Ahhhh, perfect. C'mon, I could really go for some pasta right about now." And as we started running down into the marketplace itself, he started doing the strangest thing, something I'm not even sure I can accurately describe. He entered the crowd, and started weaving in and out of the crowd, but it was so much more than that. He would jump from spot to spot, pivoting on one of his incredibly long legs to turn to a new opening, ducking under people's arms if they were outstretched, sliding between carts and people where moments later, there would have been no opening at all. He was so awkward and gangly, and yet so graceful in this…dance that he was doing, it was amazing to watch. I was surprised I could keep up with him.

Finally, he managed to find a noodle vendor, and scooted into his seat (yes, scooted; that dance of his didn't stop until the minute he touch the stool).

"Two orders of your finest noodles, please."

"Sure, bud. In a minute."

When the vendor moved back to his kitchen, I sat down next to Fox, completely bewildered by what had just taken place.

"How…How did you do that?"

"I'm not just hungry for food, you know. I need colors too."

I looked around. The marketplace seemed the same as always, nothing unusual in sight. "What do you mean? I don't see any colors."

"What?...Oh that's right, you've only seen my processed colors. Hold on a moment."

He held his right hand up and started moving his left hand around it, like he was casting some magic spell. That dark blue glow appeared on his left hand again, and as his hand moved, the glow leeched away from his hand and became a little orb just above his right palm. The orb shifted as his left hand moved, sculpting itself into a flat, round, slightly transparent form; an eyepiece.

"Indigo. Most people don't understand it, but it's the color I work best with. Try it out."

Taking the blue (or I suppose indigo) eyepiece in between my fingers, I rose it up to my right eye. I wasn't sure what was weirder; the eyepiece floating in front of my eyes, or what the eyepiece was showing me.

Where there was once just a group of customers, there was now what appeared to be a huge web of green. I could still see the people, but it was like I had X-ray vision, looking into the colors they held. Each person had their own colors, sure, but between and among them all was a vibrant, shifting, and almost _living_ network of green, moving from one person to another as they made contact, even if it was just an innocent jostle.

"Wow. This…this is amazing!"

"I know. Don't you just love crowds? No matter how different the people are, they operate perfectly, finding a way, no matter how chaotic, to get everyone where they need to go. It's a beautiful system. And my use of the colors allows me to navigate through it all."

"And…this is what you see all the time?"

"When I want to. If I have the strength. But yeah, most of the time."

I couldn't believe that there was this whole other part of the world that none of us had ever known about. It was beyond incredible. "Thanks for letting me see this. I guess you'll be wanting your eye piece back…"

"Heheh, silly Riku. What eyepiece?"

"The one you gave…" I reached up to take the thing off, but I couldn't get a hold of it. It was like it had disappeared. "Wait, what…"

"Take a look in the mirror Riku." He motioned to a mirror hanging beside the door to the vendor's kitchen. I looked into it, and I was shocked; the eyepiece had disappeared. Something didn't seem right though, I took a closer look at my eyes, and I was what had changed; my eyes were the same color, but my pupils had filled with the indigo color. Just like Fox's eyes.

"What? But, how did you…"

Fox laughed at this, a wild, unrestrained laugh. Colors or no, he didn't hold anything back. "Relax, dummy, it's just a little gift for saving me." He saw that this didn't exactly put me at ease. "Don't worry, you won't go berserk like I did, you'll probably only be able to see with the amount I gave you. You have nothing to fear."

He smiled at me, in a way that didn't seem quite as innocent as before. What was he thinking? As simple as he acted, there was a whole other side to him that both intrigued and terrified me.

"Oh, well, uh…Thanks, I guess. That was…nice of you." I started to blush a bit. Damn it, what was wrong with me!

He laughed again, full force as always. "Oh, Riku, you're so cute when you're embarrassed!" He reached over and gave my hair a little tousle.

I chuckled a bit, then straightened it back out. My head felt like it was full of cotton balls, all fluff and no concrete thoughts to get a hold of, and I had this weird warm feeling in my chest. Ugh, focus, Riku, focus! "So, uh, so the color really is just people's emotions? Fear, anger, all that stuff?"

He drew back a bit, with that same expression he had in his room. He really had a way of flipping from one mindset to another. "Well, yeah, but there's a bit more to it than that…"

Then the vendor came back from the kitchen, carrying to steaming bowls of noodles. "Alright kids, that'll be twenty fifty."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Ten twenty-five for a bowl of noodles, in this part of town? I could by a horse around here with that kind of money! "Twenty fifty? For two bowls of noodles?"

He gave us this awful smile, full of dirty yellow teeth. He looked kinda dirty all around. "Well, I've never seen this kid around before." He pointed at Fox. "And if demand for my noodles is growin', then I have every right to raise the prices. Take it or leave it."

I was about to start up an argument with the guy, when suddenly there was a scream from the other side of the marketplace. Everyone whipped around to see what had happened, but we couldn't see anything through the crowd, especially once the panic began to set in with the rest of the crowd. Whatever was going on, it was enough to send people running for their lives away from the coast.

"What's going on?"

Fox stood up from his stool, his face deadly serious. His eyes had filled with a green in addition to the indigo, though they themselves revealed nothing but a blank stare. "C'mon, I know how we can find out. Take my hand." He reached out his right hand, and I took it in mine. The green glow expanded to cover both of us, and we lifted into the air.

"Hey! Hey, you'd better pay for this! Don't expect to eat here anymore you cheapskates! HEY!" That greasy vendor raised a fist at us, but there was nothing he could do; we were already about twenty feet up.

From up here, you could see just about everything. The whole island was laid out below us, and we could see out on to the sea and the other islands. If you looked closely, you could see the island where they were building the new tree house. I knew it would never be the same, but it made me feel good to know that people cared about the old tree house, and that the new one would be there for any new kids the way the old one was for me and Sora. Oh, and Kairi, of course.

Just then, Fox pointed down to the island we had just come from. "Look at that." I looked, but I wasn't sure what it was I saw. At the edge of the beach, a mass of these hideously terrifying creatures were coming out from the water. No two creatures looked alike; I saw one that looked like a shark's head with a crab's body, and another that resembled a giant seal with barbs running down its neck. They all had all sorts of fangs and spikes all over them, to the point where you couldn't even recognize what some of them were supposed to be. Even if you could, the minute they came near anybody they just completely shifted their bodies into something even more terrifying than before.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Each and every one of those creatures was a bright, shining yellow from head to tentacle.

"I thought you had your colors under control!"

"I do! They must have broken out of my control when I crashed! They're just primal fear now, attacking everything in sight to get more fear from others!"

That couldn't be good. An army of creatures dedicated to scaring the living daylights out of anything and everything in its path? "Take us down, Fox, we've got to stop them."

He looked at me for a moment with those innocent eyes, like he was debating whether I should come along. Then he turned back with a look of determination on his face and started to descend.

* * *

Fox's PoV

Dear god, what did I do? These islands looked like such a nice place, and I had to go and wreck it like always.

Oh well, at least I got to meet Riku. He's cute, and I've never seen any readings like his before. He's got enough indigo in his system to do just about anything. And of course, the violet's popped up too. Who would have thought the brave, sensitive, handsome Riku had a little crush on me? I had better play it safe though; he had enough fear in his system to tell me his not exactly up to speed on what it is he's feeling.

Anyway, back to the yellow beasts; I brought us back down to the beach, and the minute I did, all of the creatures stared directly at us. It makes sense, I suppose. I had the power to make them immaterial again, so it was logical to think that I was the main target. As they slowly began to surround us, Riku and I came closer together, backs against one another.

"You still have that blade from earlier?"

"What, this?" He held out his hand, and the blade appeared in a swirl of darkness. I wish I knew how to use a cool blade like that; without my colors, I'm useless.

"Yeah, that one. You ready for this?"

His face hardened; obviously, those battles he'd faced before had taught him how to fight. "Yeah. Let's go." And he jumped right onto one of the nearest beasts, slicing it in half with the least amount of effort.

Of course, I had to show him that I could fight to. How else was I to win him over? I brought up some green and indigo arms (green and indigo: will and compassion. Two of my favorite colors to use, and they're so easy to use too!), and I started slashing away at four of the creatures ahead. They weren't putting up much of a fight against me, which didn't really concern me at first, but then I realized what their game plan was.

The first creature that Riku had taken down, the one he split in half? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two of the yellow beasts grab its remains. They each placed two of their tentacles onto their respective halves, and in a flash of yellow light, the halves were gone; in their place were two new creatures, exactly identical to each other.

I looked ahead, and saw that the creatures I had been dealing with had been given the same treatment. I couldn't believe it; they were using us to reproduce!

"Riku! Riku, where are you?" I looked all around, slashing only when one of the creatures attacked me.

"I'm over here!" I looked behind me to see him blasting one of the beasts with a blaze of dark fire. Damn, he was powerful! I flew over to his side.

"Riku, Riku, the creatures, they're-"

"Multiplying. I know. Any idea how to stop it?"

I thought about it for a moment. I couldn't absorb them, the fear would take over like last time. And if the green and indigo weren't doing any good…No. I couldn't. But it looked as if I had no choice.

"Riku. I need you to do something for me."

He turned his head to me. "Yeah, what?"

"Go into town and focus the sight I gave you on individual people. I need you to find someone with some orange in them. Please."

He looked at me like I was nuts. We were being attacked by the ugliest enemies he had ever seen, and I was sending him on a scavenger hunt? "Orange? What's orange do?"

"There's no time. I'll hold them off till you get back. Just hurry!"

And I turned around, facing the creatures dead on, and gave them everything I had.

* * *

Riku's PoV

"There's no time. I'll hold them off till you get back. Just hurry!"

At that, what choice did I really have? Fox looked at me with that innocent look of his, and for whatever reason I just couldn't say no to him. I'd just have to trust him for now.

I jumped up, up above the creature I had just incinerated, and ran away from the beach towards the marketplace. It was relatively simple, I just had to focus on what I was looking for, and the color vision switched on. At first all I could see was the green from before, but the more I looked the more I could see the other colors running deep inside them. There was red, yellow, blue, purple, all arranged in formations that I couldn't even begin to decipher the meaning of. But there was no orange. I had just begun to lose hope when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

"Hey you, cheapskate!"

I turned around and looked at our old friend, the noodle vendor. "Oh, you've _got_ to be kidding me."

Yep, he was orange alright. A swirling, black hole of an orange was sitting right where he heart would be. Oh well, I thought, this can't end well.

"Sorry sir, but I'm afraid that you'll be coming with me." I ran over and picked him up and put him over my shoulder. Thank god he wasn't as fat as some of the other vendors around here.

"Hey, Hey what are you doing? Police! Police, assault!" But I paid no attention to him as I ran back towards the beach.

What ever you had in mind, Fox, I thought to myself, it had better be good.

* * *

Fox's PoV

"Dear lord, Riku, what took you so long?" I looked over and saw Riku running up to me, with what looked like that noodle vendor from before.

"Never mind that, just do whatever you have to do. I'll take over the holding off part."

"Thanks." Riku put down the vendor and jumped on the nearest creature. He seemed to really like the jumping part. Anyway, I walked up to the noodle vendor, who had already started profusely swearing about the situation. I shut down all personal emotions and prepared my self for what needed to be done.

"I'm sorry if we've inconvenienced you sir, but this will only take a moment."

"What the hell are you-" Before he could say anymore, I reached out both of my hands and touched him, left hand on his head, right hand by his heart. I let the indigo run through me and into him, latching on to the orange light within. It wasn't easy; indigo and orange are pretty much set against each other as opposites. But once I brought it into me, I felt its hunger and said its name, relishing the power that it held.

"_Greed."_

Immediately, I flew up into the sky, an orange glow covering my entire body. It was so powerful, there was so much I could do…which was why had to use it quickly, before it took me over.

"Riku, get the vendor and get out of here, now!"

He looked up at me and understood, though I didn't need the indigo to see the fear in his eyes. He did as he was told. As he should. I had the power, it was mine, mine alone.

"_Alright, you 'fraidy cats! You want some yellow? Do you?_" I sent a spark of yellow streaming above my head. The beasts, stupid, senseless idiot that they were, were drawn to it like moths to a flame, sprouting wings to come join me in the sky.

"_Well you can't have it! It's mine, just like the rest of you. You all belong to me, you will always belong to me! It's mine, damn it, it's MINE!_"

And I simply let the orange go.

* * *

Riku's PoV

Like so much of what Fox does, what happened is difficult to describe. One moment he was floating in the air, the beasts surrounding him, and the next they all disappeared, a giant orange globe growing in their place. It was like looking at a dying sun, a deep orange hue that took in anything that came its way. As the globe grew, it began to suck in everything around it, creating a gale storm as it took in all the surrounding air. It almost touched the waves of the ocean, when suddenly it stopped and began to collapse upon itself. It crumpled up like an old piece of scrap paper from school, getting smaller and smaller, until where the center of the globe had been, only Fox remained. As he descended back down to the beach, the orange glow began to fade away, until it was just him, standing all alone on the beach.

I ran up to him. "What the hell just happened? Where did all those creatures go?"

He looked at me with a blank stare, like he was trying to process what I was saying. The indigo was gone from his eyes, leaving only black in his pupils.

"They're gone, Riku. The greed consumed them. Greed consumes everything, even itself."

I couldn't believe it. That was it? After everything that had happened, I was supposed to just let him tell me that after everything that happened since he arrived, they were just "gone"? Well that just wasn't going to cut it.

"That's all you have to say? "They're gone"? How am I supposed to know that they won't come back?

"They won't." He was completely emotionless, like some sort of Nobody. Somebody had to slap some sense into this guy!

"That's not enough, damn it! You come here, destroy everything, and you expect us to just trust you?"

Well, that provoked a reaction out of him. A flash of yellow appeared in his eyes, and he started cowering from me. "Th-that's fair, Riku. You know that-"

"No, I don't. All I know is what you've told me, which isn't very much, and frankly that isn't enough right now! Who are you, damn it! What are you?"

That hurt him. Tears started streaming down his face as he tried to find a way to apologize, and I realized that it wasn't entirely Fox's fault. He was a lot more scared than he had let on. I sighed, and tried a different approach. "Look, I know you're scared, and it's ok to be-"

"No, it isn't ok," he sobbed. "You're right. I haven't been completely open with you. And look at what's happened because of it."

He turned around, faced the ocean, and put his hands out in front of him. The air in front of him seemed to split open, revealing an indigo portal leading…somewhere. "We can't discuss it here. Someone might hear too much. Just come with me."

I hesitated. The last time I trusted him and his colors, he could have swallowed the whole island for all I knew. "Where are we going?"

"Someplace where we'll be safe. A place where it'll be just us, and we can talk about everything. Please." Fox wanted me to understand so badly, you could see it in his eyes.

"Ok. Let's go."

And we stepped into the portal, into the unknown. Back on the island, the portal simply closed, leaving an empty beach with a beautiful day.

* * *

Good lord that took forever to write! I don't know where that came from, the ideas just sprouted out of me!

Please send me any reviews that you can. They are greatly appreciated.

Till next time!


	5. Chapter 5

Gosh, I am on a roll these days! I wasn't going to update again for a couple of days, but I got the perfect idea and I just had to put it down.

Disclaimer: You know what, nothing clever; I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

* * *

Chapter 5: Revelations

Fox's PoV

I had never brought anyone here. I mean ever. Riku was the first. It seems appropriate though, that the guy who brought me back from the brink of insanity would be the first to see what that sanity looked like.

You see, one perk that I really enjoy about having these colors is that I have a world of my own to go with it, one I can go to whenever I want. There, up and down, left and right, none of it makes any sense to the average person; it's just endless, flowing colors in every direction, farther than the eye can see. I don't know where it is exactly; sometimes I don't think it exists at all, that it's just every color that I've taken in over the years but haven't had the chance to use. I mean, it's got to be stored somewhere, right?

Well, when Riku first got there, he didn't react very well. The part of the world we entered was entirely indigo, and the wide expanses, not to mention the weightlessness, were a little too much for him; he started freaking out almost immediately, a faint yellow growing out of him in the process.

"What the hell? I…where…how did you…Ahhhhhh!"

He was panicking; not good. Around here, emotions like that can easily get you killed. I should know, I barely made it out the first time I came here. I grabbed him by the shoulders and made him look me in the eye. "Riku, you've gotta get a grip!" It wasn't helping though, his eyes were still full of terror. "Here this will help."

In an instant, a solid platform formed underneath us. It's a lot easier to make things here, what with all the raw material lying about. We lowered down onto the platform, which certainly made Riku feel a lot safer. The minute he touched the floor, he fell to his hands and knees, clinging to the surface for dear life.

"What…the hell, Fox? Where are we?"

"Take a look around, Riku. This is my home."

He stood up, looking at his surroundings, his face shifting from one of terror to one of a quiet awe. "Oh my god…It's beautiful."

"Thanks. I'm glad you like it." I smiled, walking closer to him while saying it. Unfortunately, he noticed, and went straight down to business as a result, deflecting any attempt to get close to him.

"So, uh, explain yourself. What's the story behind all of this?"

"I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you about my colors, you tell me about your secret, and then I'll tell you the rest about me."

He got really defensive at that. "What secret? I'm not hiding anything. I'm not."

"You are. I can see it. And we need to help you work through it, or I can pretty much guarantee that you won't last a day around me."

That, he took seriously. "Alright then. Why are we here?"

I rose up above the platform, the indigo racing through my veins. "This is the only place I can call all of the colors at once without causing any real damage. Anywhere else, it would cause a storm so intense that we'd break a lot more than just a tree house."

First up, the red. I summoned some up, a huge flame that I could barely contain in my hand. "Red is rage. Destructive, uncontrollable, it can range anywhere from annoyance to fury, depending on the intensity. Now, I don't know everything about every color, but from what I can tell, there are two types. The flame that you see here…" I shifted it to its other form; a more solid, coal-like color "…and the acid, which I find is longer lasting and tends to infect others with its power . Think about it as grudges."

I brought up the yellow next, a spark of crackling energy. "I've told you everything about the orange, but not the yellow. It's one of the most common colors you know, primal, instinctual. The most basic yellow is like electricity, running through a living being, slowly burning them out. But for those who experience fear as the basis of their lives, it is simple for them to compress it, make it solid…" I did so with my spark, creating a solid orb. "…and use it as a tool to inspire fear in others. Some good examples of that are the creatures we just finished fighting."

Getting rid of the yellow, I moved on to the softer side of the colors. The green was easy enough to bring up, forming an ornate sword in my hand with merely a thought. "Green is life itself, the ability to do work and the willpower to create change in one's life. It can do anything, be anything. It's the building block of just about everything that came after it."

Next up the blue. Ugh. Regrettably, I brought up a sky blue sparkler of energy, which of course shone brighter than the rest. "This is hope. Pretty, huh?"

He continued to watch with an intense look to his face. No doubt he was trying to commit all of this to memory, it was a lot to go through. "Uh-huh…"

"Well, that's about it. It's pretty, it's bright, it might provide a slight boost in speed or strength in the short term, but it doesn't do much else. Horrible to feed on too, like trying to give air to a fish. Nothing substantial to it at all."

Riku gave me this puzzled look. "Sounds a little cynical for someone as bright and happy as you, Fox."

"I get things done. I make things right. Hope may help some people feel better, but it's only through the other colors that one can act to make a difference in their lives. Without anything else to drive it, hope is pretty much useless. Anyway, moving on."

Next up, my favorite. Three guesses which one it is, and the first two don't count. "Indigo. Compassion, empathy, any sort of attempt to understand another living being can be classified as part of the indigo, hence the sight they provide. It's just as useful as the green, but with an added boost; it can be used to pull a copy of any color from anyone nearby. That's how I got a hold of the orange earlier.

"And then there's the violet." I brought up a blurry blotch of violet, though it was still hard to keep it contained. "Damn stuff is so fuzzy, I sometimes wonder how people can think straight when they have it in their systems. It confuses the senses, but I don't really know much about it."

I then lowered myself back down to the platform, and started walking towards Riku. There was no way to sugarcoat this; it had to be done. "And here, we reach your end of the bargain. Tell me what you're hiding from me. You have way too much of the violet in your system for something not to be up."

Upon hearing this, Riku started shaking. He knew exactly what I was talking about. "Wh-what are you talking about? I-I'm not…fuzzy headed, I'm thinking perfectly clearly." The poor guy. He was still in denial of the truth, but that couldn't stop him from putting some of the pieces together. "The…The violet. You still haven't told me what it is. What is it?"

My heart ached for what I was putting him through, but I couldn't just leave him like this. He deserved to know the truth about himself. "Isn't obvious, Riku? Violet is love, any kind of love, from infatuation to full on romance. It's in you, Riku, and it flares up every time you're close to me. What does it mean? Tell me."

I took hold of Riku's hand, like he did when he tried to help me, but he pushed me away. He brought his hands up to his head, unable to accept what he was hearing.

"No…No, you're wrong! I…I don't…I wouldn't…" He crouched down on the platform, shaking his head. "I've never even liked a guy."

"You and I both know that's not true, Riku. I've seen a glimpse of your memories, remember? When we first made contact? Remember when you first met Sora."

At the mention of Sora, he raised his head. "He…He seemed nice, yeah, but I never…"

"Really? Never? Think back; remember it the way it happened, not the way you told yourself it happened."

He was silent for a long time, just huddled on the floor. Then, he finally stood up, and whispered in a small voice. "You're right. About all of it. I loved him. I still do."

I was getting through to him. It was all becoming clear to him, all the confused feelings laying out and making sense for the first time. "God, I was so jealous when he started getting closer to Kairi, but it wasn't him I was jealous of; it was her. She had him. She had the guy, and I was all alone."

I walked up next to him and took his hand again. This time, he didn't pull away. "Sora's doing great, Riku. He's home, he's safe, he has a girl who loves him as much as he loves her, and you know what? He has his best friend back. After all this time, after years of searching, he has all of the people he loves back in his life again. He's happy with his life, exactly the way he is, and you have to accept that. You have to let him go."

Riku looked me in the eyes, eyes filling with tears. Then he closed his eyes and hugged me, openly sobbing. I wrapped my arms around him and patted him on the back, trying my best to comfort him. "Shhhh, it's ok, Riku. Just let it out. It'll be fine. You're safe here. I promise."

He stopped crying after a while, and when he did he came out of the hug and looked at me with those red, dried out eyes of his. "You know something, Fox? I think I can let him go. Because you're right. For years, I had learned to bury everything, but when you got here, it all started fighting its way back to the surface. Before, I would have been content just lying to myself, and being all alone for the rest of my life. But you came, and you were sweet, and funny, and you knew how to be happy with exactly who you were, even if everything else in your life had changed." A smile crept its way across his face. "And you know what? I think I love you for it. I really do."

Oh no. No, this couldn't be happening. I wanted to help him, and I knew he had a bit of a crush on me, but I had no idea it would turn into this. "Oh Riku…I'm so sorry. But I can't."

His smile faded, and I could literally see the hope in him die while fear moved to take its place. "Wh-What? But…But you were flirting with me earlier. I-I knew you were!"

"I'm so sorry, Riku. I do like you, and I wanted to help you, but…I just can't. It wouldn't be fair to you, I'm just no good. I'm sorry." I could feel the tears welling up inside of me; I had to get him away from me. I began opened up a portal directly underneath him, to send him away. As Riku began sinking into the portal, he looked at me with intense pain in his eyes, unable to comprehend the betrayal of it all.

"But…But why?"

"I'm sorry. I hope you'll understand soon, and forgive me."

And then he was gone And I was all alone. The indigo around me began to fade away, until it was just me alone in the darkness. Just as it had always been.

* * *

It half broke my heart, writing this chapter. To any who may know my real identity, yes this pulls from some past experiences, but you'll have to read more to see what the true intent is, and none of it is 100% true to my life in the slightest. The story's not over, folks, not by a long shot.

Please send in your reviews. They are greatly appreciated.


	6. Chapter 6

Well, I'm sorry if I scared you all with that last chapter! Trust me; this is where all will be made clear.

Disclaimer: If I owned Kingdom Hearts, do you think I would be here, writing this apparently very popular story?

Thanks to all my readers and of course to TheLunarianSorcerer, whose review gave me the confidence to keep going with the story.

* * *

Chapter 6: Answers

Riku's PoV

How…How could he have done this to me? How could he have put me through all of that, ripped open one of my oldest wounds, only to leave me all alone here? It was too much; it was just too much for me to take.

When Fox opened the portal below me, I dropped down into a dark, misty forest, a collage of green and brown. I looked around, and I was all alone here. Appropriate. I couldn't do anything else; I just fell to the ground and kept crying. Nothing mattered anymore; my best friend was I don't know how far away, and the one person I felt like I could be completely open with had abandoned me. I was just about to give up for good, and just wait to die, when I heard this voice in my head.

_Riku…We had a deal, remember?_

I raised my head, trying to see who it was. "Wh-who's there? F-Fox?"

_I wouldn't leave you without an explanation, Riku. You told me your secret, so now I'll tell you everything else. Everything about me that you can't explain away with a color._

I stood up. He's still screwing with me, still playing all these games after all of this? I screamed up into the sky, "Why do you even bother? Just leave me here to rot; it's not like you care or anything!"

_I do care, Riku. I'm trying so hard to explain, but there are some things in our lives that you can't explain with just words. Please, just follow the path. I'll explain alone the way._

I looked in front of me. There was a dirt path trod out ahead, going through the mist. I hadn't noticed it before, but the mist looked strange; it wasn't the normal white you see with most fog, but a sinister, muddled brown. Fox's doing?

"Alright, I'll play your game, one last game. But then, you send me home and you never come back, got it?"

_Of course, Riku. Now let's go._

I started off down the path. It was a narrow dirt path, with these bright green ferns on either side of it.

_On the world where I come from, there is no magic, no special power. There's just people, trying to survive in a world where the very nature of our existence was always shrouded in mystery, where we believed ourselves to be the only world in existence._

_But even though there was no power, there was light and darkness. And in two individuals, the light and the dark were epitomized, completely separate from one another, yet equal in strength. They learned to live with one another, to love one another, and when they came together, the result was one with equal parts of both their power; me._

_For years, my life was a lot like this part of the forest; small, simple, yet fertile, with a bright future surely ahead._

_And then, before I could learn to enjoy the life I had, everything changed._

The road had remained constant for quite some time now, but now things started to change. The fog, and all of the impurities within it, began to slowly split along the path, until it stood on either side of the path; the fog on the left purest white, on the right darkest black.

_Light and dark were never meant to be together, and slowly the separated, becoming stronger and more…antagonistic than ever before. And I? I was where you are now, caught between the two, belonging to neither but wanting acceptance from both._

_Run._

I stopped in my tracks. Run? From what? I hadn't seen anything or anyone here at all, except the ferns and what I assumed to be some trees in the distance.

"What?"

_Just Run!_

It was then that the first blast came out at me. It was a huge gust of the white mist, bursting out of the rest of the fog, right about where my head would have been had I not ducked. When it missed, it instantly made contact with the black, fading away in a gust of steam. In response, the black sent out it's own blast, and next thing I knew I was running like hell to make it out of what had become a war zone. The blasts kept on coming though, almost as if I was the target.

I couldn't keep running forever though, and when I stopped, they all closed in on me. The first blast, from the white fog, knocked me to the ground, burning my back and wrapping around my chest. It took hold of me, and started pulling me into its side. As I tried to fight my way out, a blast of black hit me and started pulling on me too; I was going to be ripped apart.

"Fox! Get me out of here!"

_Just keep going forward! Look at the path!_

I look forward, and found that for the first time since I'd started walking, the path made a sharp turn, to the left. Strange, though; the division between the two mists kept going in the same direction, so that making the turn would for me to go into the white mist.

Of course, at this point I could've cared less where the path was going; as long it got me the hell out of here! I started crawling my way towards the turn, dragging the mist with me. As insubstantial as it looked before, it was not going to let me go without a fight.

It took an unbelievable effort, but I managed to make it around the end, where the fog just faded away. I looked around, surrounded by the white mist; it was like looking into a blizzard without the cold.

_Sorry about that. It wasn't fun for me either, being in the middle of all that fighting._

Oh, I was beginning to catch on now! This place, it was his path, in some weird metaphorical sense. But how did this whole "into the light" thing play into it?

"Ok, I give. Tell me what it means. How did you get out of all the fighting?"

_I did the only thing I felt I could; I picked a side. I went into the light, and for a while, I was happy. Light is good, so I could only be happy here, right?_

_But then…after a while, it became a trap. Where did the path go?_

It was then that I realized: where did the path go? There was nothing but fog ahead, and it was creeping towards me. I took a step back, but the fog kept after me. I turned to run, but the fog had sealed off the way I came too. I was trapped.

_The light, it was impossible to fight, impossible to reason with. The light was good and right, so any disagreement I had made me wrong and bad by definition. I had no options, no paths to take. _The fog formed a circle around me, coming closer all the time, but Fox just kept on going. _The light gave me nothing, just asked to take more, and more, and more…Until…there was just nothing left. And I started to fade away._

And I was lost-we were lost-to the blinding light.

…

I couldn't begin tell you how long I was left there, unable to move, or even breathe, in the white light. All I know is that after a while, the white slowly began to fade, until nothing but black remained. And then, there he was, huddled in the inky blackness.

"It took a long time for me to find my way out of the light. A long time for me to realized that the other one, the darkness, while not perfect, would protect me and keep me safe. But when I made my way back to the dark, I found that the conditions of my birth had led caused the light and dark I retained from them both to mix into something new. I was a Prism; one where the light and dark came together and splintered, creating the colors you see around me most of the time."

He flew over to me, face to face. "Do you see now why I can't be with you, Riku? I'm scary and broken and dark and twisty. I don't even know what good and bad are anymore, all I've ever really known is how to survive. And if I use too much color, too much power? I'll regress again, start hurting people again. You have no idea how many people I've hurt in the course of all of this." There were tears in his eyes; he was opening up to me in a way I had never expected. "I'm no good, Riku. I'm just no good."

Before he could say anything more to me, or worse, send me away, I grabbed his hand and brought him close to me. I had to say this, and say it now, or I'd never forgive myself for it.

"Ok, Fox, you'd better listen me right now, because I'm only going to say this once. You are the most stubborn, crazy, idiotic freak I have ever seen. You are so screwed up and flawed, I am seriously surprised you can look anyone in the eye. You are completely and utterly irredeemable, and you know what?" I brought my other hand up—and touched his cheek. "So am I."

"Hu…Huh?"

I looked him in the eyes; they were filling with a light blue color. "I know how you feel, Fox. I've betrayed my friends, again and again, and I've fallen so deep into the darkness that there were times I could have just given up for good. But I've fought, I've survived, I am right there with you.

"And you know, we don't have to be perfect and happy and shiny or whatever. We can be dark and twisty together." I smiled, and Fox laughed, that loud, unrestrained laugh from before. "Just don't shut me out, ok?"

"Oh-Okay." He just looked at me for a while, just enjoying the sight of my face. "You know, I-I wasn't lying before, y'know. You are…very cute."

I blushed. "Well, you're not so bad looking yourself, kiddo." He laughed at that too, a smaller laugh, and came even closer. I could feel his breath on my face. Then, after a painfully long moment of anticipation, we kissed. It was a long, tender, beautiful kiss, that seemed to last a lifetime. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever done, a moment more perfect than you could ever imagine.

When Fox finally pulled back, he closed his eyes and lowered his head, a faint smile on his face. A faint light began to shine on his face, but it didn't seem to be coming from him. He must've noticed it too, because he turned towards it, and then looked at me with this huge grin on his face. "Riku, look."

The light was coming from a huge, indigo podium, just floating in the darkness. It was like the trunk of a sapling, with ridges along its base and roots spreading out into the void. It had a flat top to it, out of which grew a beautiful violet rose, in full bloom.

"Fox, did you…"

He smiled and shook his head, a mix of pride and affection in his voice. "No. That display over there, that was all you. You're stronger than you think."

He started drifting over to the podium, pulling my hand with him. "C'mon, let's go."

"Go? Where?"

He looked back at me, that familiar mix of indigo and green finally returning to his eyes. "Where do you think, silly? Back to the islands. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, I bet."

He took me over to the podium, touched the rose, and in a flash of light we were back on the beach, the sun shining like nothing had happened.

"Let's go home."

"Where else?"

"Well, anywhere you want, really. We can do anything, just wait and see."

* * *

Well, that's the end of this storyline. Anyone who wants to see what happens next, or has ideas for another story with Fox, by all means let me know in a review!

Of course, I do intend to keep this going. I've got a lot of ideas for the concept...Keep your eye on this story, I promise we'll keep it going good. (yes, this is bad grammar, but if you've read this far, then obviously I've gotten your attention!) :)

Heck, just review, let me know what was good/bad/iffy for the storytelling.


	7. Chapter 7

And I'm back! Wow, the new ideas came faster than I thought! Granted it's been a while since my last post, but you all know how it is.

Hope you enjoy the next chapter! I'm going back to a more adventure-y side of things, but for those of you who like the introspective stuff, don't worry, it'll be mixed in there. As always, I ask that you let me know what you think—review!

Disclaimer: Do you even need to ask at this point? I DON'T OWN KINGDOM HEARTS!

* * *

Chapter 7: Back to Business

Fox's PoV

Whew. What a ride. Oh, it just feels so good to breathe again, to know that I can just relax without the fear of losing control again. I mean sure, the colors affect me the same way they did before, but it's different now; I've got Riku here to keep me grounded.

Riku's been so great, getting me permanently situated here on the islands. The day after we got back, he took me right to his school, Destiny High, to get registered. Once I was placed in the sophomore class (that threw Riku for a loop—he actually thought I was older than him! Well, I always was tall.), it was a cinch getting me caught up in all of my classes. I've made plenty of friends here, not to mention I've gotten to know Sora a lot better, seeing as we have half our classes together.

To be honest, I would have been happy that Sora could be in the same room as me without punching me out. Destroying his tree house, sending him into road rage, putting his childhood home in jeopardy; not the first impression I would have chosen. Still, the guy was just as happy-go-lucky as Riku said; he took me like a little brother, all forgiven and forgotten.

"So, you and Riku, huh?" He smiled. "I've gotta say, I did not see that coming."

It was the middle of our Algebra 2 class, but that didn't bother us much; the teacher let us do pretty much whatever we wanted, and as long as I tutored Sora after class, we aced every test. "Trust me, neither of us did either until it happened."

That didn't entirely make sense to him, but he did his best to hide it. Riku and I had decided not to tell him exactly what had happened back in my world; where would we have even begun?

"Well, good for you guys. Kairi came here in a meteor shower too, you know. It feels right that Riku should find his person in a shower too."

I smiled at that; the guy sure did know how to tie everything up in a neat little bow. "Thanks. It would've really sucked if my boyfriend's best friend hated me."

"Are you kidding? You're awesome! And any crazy stuff from before is just water under the bridge."

"Thanks Sora." The bell rang: time for Chem. I got up and gathered my books to go—and stopped. That feeling was back again, a feeling that I couldn't quite place, but had been popping up for sometime now. I'd had it before I came here, back…before all of this. Alright, enough was enough, I had to tell them.

"Hey, Sora? Can you help me out with something?"

"Sure, what?"

"I need to talk to Riku about something important today, and I think you should be there. Meet me outside after school?"

"Ok…about what?"

"Just…making sure all the loose ends from my arrival are taken care of. Don't forget."

"Sure. See you then."

…

At the end of school, I came outside to see if I could catch the bus home, only to find Riku there waiting for me with this look on his face, like he was ready to pull a string and release hundreds of balloons from the sky. I smiled this big smile and ran into his arms; if there was one thing he was good at, it was finding ways of making sure I never forgot how incredible he was.

"Riku! What are you doing here? Your classes ended, like, half an hour ago!"

"Well, I couldn't possibly leave my guy here without someone to walk him home, could I? And right before the weekend too!" He smiled a coy little smile that had been coming up almost nonstop since our time in my world. I guess the revelation that he was gay really helped him open up out of that dark, moody exterior he had hidden behind before.

"Thanks Riku, you're the best." I gave him a quick little kiss on the lips. It was becoming surprisingly common for one of us to do this, not to mention fun. Oh shoot, Sora! "Oh, wait, we've gotta wait for Sora. I told him to come over today, so we could all talk."

"Talk? About what?"

I lowered my head at that; as open and happy I was with Riku, there were some things that I just needed to sort out on my own before talking with him. "Just…making sure we've tidied up all the loose ends from my arrival. Ok?"

"Hmm…Ok, if you say so." Not very convincing on his part, but it will have to do.

Before we could discuss it anymore, Sora came bounding out of the school, looking around for me. I waved at him. "Hey Sora! Over here!"

He saw where I was through the mob of students—like I said, I'm tall, I stand out in any crowd—and ran over, sprinting like it was a matter of life or death. The kid sure did know how to brighten any situation; he was just so…enthusiastic. Even without turning on the indigo, I could _feel_ the hope and willpower radiating off of him. Strange. That was something to keep an eye on: Sora could actually use the blue for something productive. Not to mention the other colors I kept seeing, deep within him…

Ah well, it could wait for another time. For now, all we could do is go home and…well, get down to business, I suppose. For lack of better term, anyway.

"C'mon, Sora, let's go back to our place. I'll explain there."

* * *

Riku's PoV

As soon as this is over, I've gotta talk to Fox alone. This whole cloak and dagger routine is not going to slide. I've been playing the good boyfriend for a while now, but I'm really starting to get worried about him.

I mean, I have every right to be concerned, right? Fox may be very open around me—hell, open around everyone—but for every deep dark secret he lets out, there's something even darker deeper down that he keeps hidden. Half of the time, I wonder if those colors do more harm than good…he doesn't let them out around anyone, except for Sora and me. And when he does, they're all over the place, flying around the room like they own the place. I'm not exactly sure if that's a good thing, but at least it makes him easier to understand, especially when he gets into his over-thinking moods.

But anyway, back to the situation at hand: We were back at my house, though I suppose it's mine and Fox's now. Fox was fixing us some pasta, his favorite dish actually, tortellini, while Sora and I sat in the old living room. We watched as he half-danced his way around the kitchen, the way he did when I first took him down to the marketplace. From what I could tell, that meant that he was either excited or scared about what was about to happen, though the yellow waves of color following him probably meant the latter.

"What do you this is all about?" I looked over at Sora, who was fidgeting with one of his chains while watching Fox cook. He may have forgiven Fox for how they first met, but obviously he still remembered how the yellow had messed with his head.

"My guess? It's either something to do with him, or something to do with his colors. He would have told me if it was something else."

Sora looked up at me in surprise. "You mean, he hasn't told you anything yet, at all?"

"Nope, he's running the show all on his own."

He seemed surprised by this, and with good reason; outside of the house, Fox and I were the perfect couple. It was only when he got in his moods that one could ever see the tension. "But, I thought you two shared everything. Whenever Kairi sees you two, she starts asking why we aren't that close."

"What can I say? Fox has more scar tissue than I ever thought possible."

"Alright, who's hungry?" Fox came bounding into the living room, three bowls of pasta in tow. He only held one in his hand though; the other two were carried in green tendrils floating in midair. As Fox slid into one of the other chairs, the waves of green lowered the bowls into our laps, dissolving and finally disappearing in the process.

"Well, go on, try it!" Fox beamed as he began digging into his tortellini. "My parents used to make this all the time. Do you like the cream sauce? A good cream sauce always makes the dish!" He looked up from the bowl, only to find that neither of us had started eating. "What?"

I put my bowl to the side and leaned forward; intervention time. "Fox, what's going on? We know something's wrong. It's just us here. Tell us."

"But…but the tortellini…"

Sora followed my lead. "It can wait, Fox. Just tell us what's on your mind."

He paused for a moment, then put his bowl to the side and stood up, walking over to the window. He looked out on the beach, his usual smile replaced with a vacant stare. Rule number one about Fox; when it comes to his real emotions; don't pay attention to his face, but his colors and voice. Either one tells all every time.

"There's another Prism out there."

The room went absolutely dead silent. If this was true, if there was someone else out there with the amount of power Fox displays on a daily basis, then we were in a lot of trouble. After what seemed like forever, Sora was the first one to speak. "Wh-what? Who? Where?"

"I don't know. I've been…feeling something coming for sometime now. Those creatures from the beach were the first sign of it, and now…I can feel this…pounding in my world. Like someone's trying to get in."

Ok, now was the time for me to speak up. When Fox gets this figurative with his speech, it's up to me to bring him back down to earth, make sure people can understand what he's saying. "Wait a minute. I thought the creatures were just debris from when you fell."

"I thought so too. But when I unleashed the orange on them…they didn't come back into me. They just sort of faded away, like they were being called somewhere else. And if there's someone out there who can do what I do on that large of a scale, we need to find them and stop them from trying to hurt anyone else."

Sora decided to join back in on the conversation, though it was pretty clear that this was all way over his head. "Well…How do we find them?"

Fox walked back towards our chairs, stopping right at the table in the center of the room. He held out his hands over the table, closed his eyes, and let the indigo light flow out of his hands and above the table. The indigo floated for a bit, like a puff of smoke, then clumped together into a liquid-like orb. As Fox remained frozen in a calm trance, the orb stretched and grew, morphing into a large sprawling castle over a jagged expanse; a three dimensional map of whatever Fox was seeing.

"It's coming from somewhere in this area. Do either of you recognize it?"

Of course we did; we both knew that place better than anyone else. "That…That's Hollow Bastion. It's on a different world, but we've got a few friends over there from back before you showed up. Are you sure?"

"Yes, definitely. Why, did something happen there?"

Damn, Fox was good. Even straining his indigo light like this, he could still sense the sparks of fear coming from the both of us. Sora replied, "Y-Yeah, they were the first world to fall to the darkness. They've been trying to rebuild, but the darkness never really left." As Sora said this, Fox let go of the power, letting the indigo fade away. "You're absolutely sure?"

"Yes."

Well, it wasn't the best of situations, but at least we had an idea of what to do next. "So, now we go to Hollow Bastion, find whatever or whoever this Prism is, and shut it down. It's a weekend, so I say we go now."

Now this, I could do. Doing boring schoolwork, trying to decipher good versus bad relationship signals, it all was just so incredibly logistical and complex to the point of driving me crazy. But taking down a bad guy, keeping the worlds safe? I couldn't wait to set off.

"Get the gummi ship from the King, Sora. We're going to need it—today."

* * *

?

_Ah, so he's finally figured it out, huh? Took him long enough to notice what I was doing. Not that he ever did before._

_Let him come find me. I'll show him what I'm really capable of. He may have thought he was strong before, but now, __now__ we'll see who the stronger one really is._

_Your days of fun and happiness are over, Fox. When I'm done with you, you'll regret ever meeting your little Jen.

* * *

_

Dun-dun-duuuun! Hope you all enjoyed it, and by the way: look out for hints as to what's going to come up later in the story! I've been placing hints as to what kind of plots I'm thinking of mixing in at the moment; see how many you can find!

To the Lunarian Sorcerer: Thanks so much for the reviews. I haven't played that particular game yet, but I'm doing some research on the plot and characters. From what little I know, I can already think of some ways to mesh them in, but you'll have to keep reading to find out!

As always…REVIEW PLEASE!


	8. Chapter 8

And we trudge on! One of these days, I'm going to run out of ideas. Today, fortunately, is not that day. I'm fairly certain it isn't tomorrow either. Let me get back to you on that.

Disclaimer: Do I own Kingdom Hearts? No siree bub.

* * *

Chapter 8: Into the Castle

Leon's PoV

We've come so far in our efforts. It only makes sense that just as our goal is in sight, something new would come and try to destroy it. After all, look at where we are.

The Radiant Garden Restoration Committee has been working nonstop since the last major Heartless invasion. We've restored the castle in its entirety, saved entire libraries and databanks of knowledge from destruction, even managed to contain the Heartless that are left within a mile radius of their fortress. We were just about to call Sora over actually, to help round off the last of them—when his gummi ship was spotted flying over the castle.

"C'mon, Leon! We've gotta see them, they're back, they're back!"

I had been fielding computer reports of the sighting from our base in the castle basement, when Yuffie started pulling on my arm, trying to get me outside.

"We don't know that yet, Yuffie! For all we know, they could be Nobodies, or Maleficent coming back, or…"

"Would you relax? If that were true, we'd be fighting off their goons by now! C'mon!"

She gave up eventually, and somersaulted her way out of the room. That girl…she was like a cheerleader the way she kept her energy up like that. Aw well, I couldn't just let her go out there alone, so I put the computer on sleeper mode and made my way out to the courtyard outside the basement entryway.

Yuffie was jumping up and down (of course, when wasn't she?), pointing out to the center of the courtyard. "Didn't I tell you, Leon? It's them!"

At that moment, a beam of light came down on the center of the courtyard. When the light disappeared, in its place stood Sora, Riku, and…?

Immediately, I jumped in front of Yuffie, Gunblade drawn. "Who the hell is he? If he's another one of those Nobodies…"

"Don't worry, Leon, it's just Fox. He's with us."

Sora came bounding up to me, a large grin on his face as always. I relaxed my grip on the sword—and gave the kid a slap upside the head. "Do you realize how much trouble you've caused? We've had to deal with complaints from the other citizens all day, with all of them wondering what the hell an unauthorized, unannounced gummi ship was doing floating over their heads!"

"Whoa, calm down Leon." He rubbed the back of his head; he clearly hadn't been keeping up with his training, or that wouldn't have hurt nearly as much. "We just thought we'd stop by. Y'know, see how things are going?" Another big toothy smile; Sora was lying through his teeth, but I wasn't going to get anything out of him with those two around.

The two in question, Riku and the new guy, Fox, were standing a few feet away. Riku, ever the fighter, had his blade drawn, while the other one was whispering something in his ear, my guess being that his was trying to calm him down. Something was off, though, they seemed…close. Really close, as in the kid was practically draped over Riku. And that wasn't all; Fox had his hand up in front of him mouth to keep us from hearing him, and there were little purple sparks moving along the hand. The sparks entered Riku's ear, causing him to smile and…blush? I…don't think I've ever seen Riku blush.

Whatever. All in good time, I suppose. I turned back to Sora, his smile unwavering. "Sorry, I'm just a little…testy. Things have changed since you were last here."

Sora's smile faltered a bit; maybe they did have less than ulterior motives. "Well, actually, we were hoping to ask you about that. Fox, over here, he thinks there's something on this world that you should know about."

Now we were getting somewhere. Still, if we were going to figure out what they were really here for, best make them comfortable. "Alright, explain on the way. I wanna show you the changes we've made since you were last here."

"Ok! Hey guys, Leon's gonna show us around. C'mon!" The new kid practically flew off of Riku's shoulder, and then ran over to us. Riku straightened his posture, looked over at me, and calmly walked over.

I didn't know what was going on between the two of them, but I knew I had to keep an eye on them, especially the new kid. Whoever this guy was, he obviously had a hold on Sora and Riku, and if he turned them against me, he would learn exactly what happens when you mess around in my town.

* * *

Riku's PoV

A lot has changed around here, since the last time I was here anyway. It's…weird. I don't know how much of that change is actually for the better.

After sending Yuffie off to find the others, Leon took us into the castle basement, showing us all of the improvements he and the Restoration Committee had made, which were pretty expansive. Sora had decided to go with Yuffie, see all of his old friends, but I had never really warmed to them, so the three of us made our way deeper into the castle. I can't really speak for Fox, seeing as this was his first visit here, but I couldn't believe how much the place had changed. None of the debris was left and all of the halls had been fully rebuilt, leaving a maze of hallways all around us.

"These halls are a security measure; they keep intruders from getting anywhere near the libraries. Completely inescapable—unless your heart's energy signature happens to be keyed into the system, like mine." He put a hand against the wall, which gave off a faint glow in response. "It registers the energy signature and moves walls around to direct me to where I need to go. In this case, the surveillance room."

He was right about that; we could hear the grinding of the walls moving farther down. While we walked along the now very straightforward path, Fox moved back from Leon's side over to me and put his hands on my shoulder.

"Hey, handsome," he whispered.

"What are you doing? You saw Leon staring at us before, and he doesn't like me to begin with. I don't wanna give him any ideas as to what we're doing…"

He smiled that coy little smile he always gives when I'm off base on whatever he's thinking. "Would you relax? It was fun earlier, but I've got something else I've gotta talk to you about. You notice anything…off about Leon?"

I looked up at Leon. I always thought he was tall, but really he wasn't any taller than Fox. "…No, not really. Why?"

He shook his head. "You've really got to start using your colors more. I know you can, I gave you a head start with the indigo. Turn it on and take a look."

I sighed, and did so. As amazing as it was the first time I used it, I had come to sort of dislike using the indigo myself. It always felt…wrong, like I was seeing something personal that wasn't any of my business. Anyway, I looked over at Leon, and Fox was right; something was up. Leon's colors had the green that I had always expected they would, but there was something else in there. A large mass of yellow had wrapped its way around the green, and it looked like it was smothering it.

"That's not good. The Prism…?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I do know one thing though—he's not completely in control of himself. We need to help him, before he does something he'll regret."

I thought about that for a bit. If Leon had gone bad…I wasn't sure if we could take him. "Let's just wait and see how this plays out. If you think we should attack, I'm right with you, but until then we play it safe."

"We're here." Leon stopped in front of a large steel door. It had a huge, safe-like lock on it, the kind you see in a bank, or on a ship. He spun the wheel about two turns clockwise, and it opened inward, revealing a small room with a single chair and an entire wall of computer screens.

The screens were literally ceiling to floor, about fifty or sixty screens all next to each other. Some had lists of reports on current events in Radiant Garden, others had reports on inventory for some sort of supplies…but most of them were surveillance tapes, and from the looks of it, they covered every square inch of the town.

"What…What the hell is this?"

"After the Battle of 1000 Heartless, we had to take matters into our own hands. Any sighting of Heartless is registered by the surveillance, and then disposed of by the security forces." At that moment, a single Shadow Heartless popped up on one of the screens, the one filming the town square.

"Ahhh, perfect timing. Watch." He put his hand against the wall again, this time making a panel open in the wall. Out of it popped a small microphone, into which he spoke, "Security to Sector 1. Engage."

On the screen, the Shadow crawled into the center of the square, antennae twitching as it searched for prey. Suddenly, an orange circle appeared underneath the Shadow, growing brighter and brighter—until it exploded into a pillar of flame, taking the Shadow with it.

It was beyond horrible; it was cruel. I drew my blade and held it ready to swing "Who the hell do you think you are? You can't just blast anywhere you want at any given time."

He turned to me and raised his Gunblade too, eyes full of yellow color. Good thing I had the sense to keep the indigo running. "Who are you to judge? I'm keeping my home safe! Maybe you haven't noticed, but there are no Heartless anywhere in Radiant Garden! People can be safe and happy here!"

"Happy? They're terrified to leave their homes! Or haven't you noticed that every camera of yours shows nothing but a deserted town?" It was true; the town looked fine, except that there were no people in sight, anywhere at all.

"I've created a sanctuary!"

"You've created a police state!"

"Well at least I'm trying to do some good! You could go bad any day now!"

"Oh yeah? Well, guess what, you can just go to hell, you piece of—"

"_STOP IT!"_

I turned around; Fox was huddled in a corner of the room, a yellow haze surrounding his hands.

"_So…So dark, so dark…"_

I turned back to Leon and blasted him into the wall with a dark flame. As soon as I made sure he was down for the count, I ran over to Fox and kneeled down beside him. He was shaking, having another one of his episodes. "Fox, it's ok. What happened?"

"_I-I-I saw the tapes and there were no people no people at all so I-I reached out the indigo and there's no green no blue no violet no indigo just yellow the fear god the FEAR they're all so afraid…"_

I should have known this would happen the second I saw the tapes. Damn it, why couldn't I help him more? "Fox, it's ok, we can help them, just come with me—"

"_GET AWAY FROM US!"_

I turned around to find that Fox had encircled us in a small yellow dome. Outside the dome, I saw Leon collapse onto the floor again, just outside the perimeter; he had tried to attack me from behind.

When Fox finally lowered his force field, I grabbed his hand and brought us both to our feet. "C'mon, we've gotta get out of here!"

We ran out of the surveillance room and down one of the halls as fast as we could. Behind us, Leon was getting up, making his way out into the hall despite the injuries we had already inflicted on him. "You won't make it out of here alive! I control the walls; I'll never let you out!" And the walls began to grind again, which only provided more incentive to keep running.

To be honest, I was surprised Fox was cooperating as much as he was. His face was still full of terror, and I could feel the yellow crackling in his hands, but at least he wasn't rambling anymore. Which, frankly, I felt like doing, as every turn we made brought us to another dead end.

"C'mon, c'mon, where is it? Where's the exit?" I kept back tracking, trying to find a path that didn't leave to a dead end. But then, there weren't any paths left; I had hit my last dead end, and behind me Leon had already caught up.

"You won't take my world away from me! It's my town, MINE!" He raised his Gunblade, aimed, and fired. I could only just barely hold the fireball off with my blade, when he sent another one my way, and another, and another…"

"_LEAVE HIM ALONE!"_

Fox jumped up from behind me, over me, so that he stood between me and Leon. Before Leon had the chance to react, he threw out his arms and unleashed the yellow he had been holding in for so long, forming a trail of crackling spider-webs that sprang forward and wrapped their way around Leon. Fox pulled his arms back, causing the webs to spring forward, pulling Leon up so he was barely an inch away from him. He reached out and touched Leon, his left hand on Leon's head and his right on Leon's heart as his fingers glowed with a soft indigo light.

"_Fear. Willpower."_

He then pushed Leon back, sending him flying across the hall. His hands filled with the yellow and green, Fox pressed both hands against the wall and sent both of the colors into the circuitry.

"_Contact complete."_

As he did so, the walls began to grind against the floor again, this time closing the space between Leon and the two of us. Before the space closed, Leon looked back at us, a feeling of hopelessness across his face.

"N-No…No, you can't do this! This is my world, these are my walls!"

"_Your colors are mine. That means your walls are too. They listen to me now. Sorry."_

And the wall closed, creating a grateful silence.

* * *

Fox's PoV

As soon as I got Leon's colors out of my system, I managed to calm myself down. I look back at Riku, who looked like he had just seen a ghost.

"I'm fine now, Riku. Now let's get out of here."

"How? The walls…"

"Didn't you hear me? They listen to me now; they're moving to let us out as we speak." As I said this, the previously dead end opened up to reveal a long hall, at the end of which was the doorway out.

"Alright Fox. After you." He smiled as he said it, thank god; I didn't want to have to deal with losing his trust after everything we'd been through. How could I deal with all of this without him?

Anyway, we made our way outside to find that it had started raining. I expected it to feel good, after everything that had happened in the basement, but something was wrong. The second the first drop hit my skin, I felt that all too familiar feeling of fear trickle down my spine. Each drop that came after only made the feeling worse, to the point that we had to hide under one of the overhangs beside the basement entrance.

"You feel it too, don't you Riku?"

"Yeah. Why is that?"

"I'm not sure. But it would certainly explain the amount of yellow in the town, not to mention Leon." I looked up into the sky, turning the indigo back on while doing so. And I can honestly say, I had never seen anything like it.

Up in the sky, there was literally a hurricane of yellow color swirling in with the storm clouds. As the yellow mixed in with the clouds, it joined with the raindrops that were coming down as well, resulting in millions of little yellow rain bombs falling from the sky.

"Riku, I need you to turn your indigo on while I fly us up. We need to find the source of the yellow while shielding ourselves from the effects, and I can't do both, not after the little stunt I pulled inside."

"Alright then. Fly me up, flyboy." He smiled. Riku must still be freaking out from what happened with Leon; he only flirts like a girl this openly when he's really nervous.

Either way, it had to be done. We could talk feelings later. He took my hand, and I created an indigo bubble around us as we flew up into the air.

"Well? Do you see anything?"

He looked all around, trying to see past the indigo and the yellow droplets all around us. Not an easy task. "I'm not sure…Take me higher."

I raised us higher, until we were about 3 stories above the ground. It really was a beautiful castle; a complex system of pipes surrounding a giant glass heart.

"I like the heart in the center. Whose idea was that?"

He looked back at me, a look of confusion in his eyes. "You know, I've been wondering the same thing myself. It's new since I was last here; before, it was this really gruesome looking thing." He then turned away, focusing on the task at hand. "I think I see it!"

"Really? Where?"

He pointed towards the top of the castle, where the pipes emptied out in a series of vents. "Out of those! The yellow's brighter from over there; I can see it even through the rain!"

The vents, huh? That meant that whatever was causing all of this was somewhere deep in the castle. Made sense, seeing as I felt whatever the Prism was coming from somewhere around the castle, not the world in general.

"Well, alright then. Let's go spelunking and see what we can find."

* * *

?

_Silly boys. Little do you all know, you're doing exactly as I want you to…

* * *

_

As always, review to let me know what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

And the midnight delirium goes on and on! I can't help but wonder why all my good ideas come after 8 o clock, let alone the really late hours. Aw well, it's still fun!

Disclaimer: Who owns Kingdom Hearts? Oh, oh yeah, NOT ME.

* * *

Chapter 9: Jen

Fox's PoV

Remind me to never to go into a suspicious looking vent without more than my boyfriend for backup again. EVER.

It was absolutely horrible getting through the opening of the vent. Sure, it was big enough for us to get through, but the yellow was coming out with such intensity that it began eating away my indigo shield about halfway down the pipe, the way saliva eats away at food in your mouth. Disgusting, I know, but believe me when I say that it looked twice as disgusting as it sounds. If we could just get to the base of the vent…

"Riku, help me out here, willya? I can't keep this up much longer."

"How am I supposed to help?"

"Just use whatever color you can get! Indigo, green, I don't care, just do it!"

As we kept moving forward, Riku brought his hands together, trying to make the indigo come out, but all that he could do was make a slight haze around his fingers. No matter how much I had tried to help him since I arrived, he couldn't do anymore than see. "I…I'm trying, Fox, I just—"

"If you can't use the indigo, go for the green! Or the violet even, I've seen you do it!" We weren't going to make it, at this rate; we were about three-quarters of the way to the base of the vent, but I barely had any indigo left in me. The yellow was going to rip through and tear us to shreds.

"What do you mean? I've never used either of those, you know that, why can't you—"

"Argh!" The yellow finally broke through the bubble, striking me in the shoulder. It was cold, horribly cold, and it was enough to break my concentration, causing the indigo to completely collapse around us.

Good God, it hurt so much! The yellow came down on us, wave after wave, sinking into our very beings. Every new blast was like a dagger going straight though my skin and into my heart. I could feel it hurting in my bones, my heart, my very soul! It was a pain so indescribable mind-shattering, I could barely keep from screaming.

We couldn't stay here; we would die if this kept up. I dug deep into myself, trying to find the slightest shred of color left uncontaminated by the yellow, and found a slight amount of green, deep in my subconscious where the yellow couldn't get to it. I dredged it up and shot it out of my hand, propelling us the rest of the way, to the end of the vent. Here, the vent made a sharp turn, moving down into the base of the castle. And so we fell, down into the depths of the castle, leaving the horrible yellow far behind us.

* * *

Riku's PoV

It was a long time before either of us woke up. At least, I think it was; we were deep enough in the pipes that, even if I tried, I couldn't begin to guess what time it was, or even if it was day or night outside. All I know is that when I woke up, the only light in the room was coming from the sides of the pipes.

The pipes were like the halls in the basement; long, twisting, without ending. Great, just what I need, to be trapped indoors again. Of course, there were differences; the walls were rounded, so that there was no clear division between the walls, ceilings, or floors. And then there was the lighting; instead of the bright lights they had in the basement, there were small…tubes filled with what looked like the yellow moving along the top of the pipe. It made sense, I suppose; the yellow traveled out toward the front of the vent, and then was safely released in one of those gas clouds. Their light was faint, but it was enough to see, and against the green, rust-stained pipes, it gave the place an eerie, unpleasant feeling, as if we were in a sewer.

"That hurt, you know."

I turned around. Fox was sitting against the side of the pipe, his legs brought up to his chest. He didn't have any colors anywhere, and his eyes revealed nothing but that same vacant stare. "That hurt a lot."

I wanted to go to him, see what was wrong, but I'd be damned if I was going to let him have the satisfaction. Hurt or no, he asked too much of me this time. "What did you expect me to do?"

He looked up at me, his eyes no longer vacant. Instead, they showed me an expression I had never seen from Fox before: accusation. "Oh, I don't know, maybe help me out? I mean, what the hell, Riku? I needed you back there, and you weren't there for me."

"Of course I was there for you! You know I always am! Just because you couldn't get the job done—"

"I was doing all that I could!" He brought his arms away from his legs, spraying flames of red towards me in the process. "I'm not some sort of god, or a superman, you know that! I needed you, to help me do what I couldn't, and you left me hanging to dry!"

The red raised him from the ground, suspending him in midair in front of me. "Why? Why would you do that? Why would you leave me, me, all alone when you promised me we'd be there for each other?"

"I didn't—"

"Then why didn't you help me? Why didn't you use your colors?"

"BECAUSE I'M SCARED, OKAY?" I backed away, scared to death of what was going to happen next. Fox's red flames faded away, leaving him in front of me, a look of confusion on his face. "I'm scared…"

He reached out to me, trying so hard to understand. The color was completely gone from his pupils now; he was drained, no color at all. Just him and me.

"What are you afraid of, Riku?"

I turned away from him, trying to hide the tears in my eyes. This was something I never wanted Fox to know, but had no choice but to tell him. "I…I'm scared of using the colors. I'm scared…that if I use them…and they take control of me too…"

"…then you won't be able to make it back down to earth, like me?" I nodded. He was right. Fox knew how to deal with all of this stuff, but I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must actually feel like to have the power running through me. What if I couldn't handle it?

"Oh, Riku…" Fox put his left hand on my right shoulder and turned me around to face him. "I know. It scares me too."

"No it doesn't. You use it all the time."

"I use the green and indigo all the time, the safe colors." Tears started moving down his face too, as he saw that my supposed betrayal was by no means a method of hurting him. "The harsh colors…I don't think anyone can really get used to that. No one good. No one like you." A violet glow grew from his hands, entwining them with mine. "But when I overdose on color, when I start losing control, who's always there to help me through it?"

I smiled. "You."

"That's right. You're there for me, and I'm here for you. That's how this works, remember?" We rose slightly, floating in the middle of the pipe. "The next time you feel afraid of using the colors, don't worry about losing control; just let it come, and I'll help you through whatever happens afterwards."

"Thank you, Fox."

"_Awww, how sweet."_

Before I could figure out who it was, one of the tubes of yellow burst, shooting yellow sparks out on the both of us. We were thrown apart by the blast, both of us screaming from the impact.

"_Now this is more like it! All that lovey-dovey stuff, that won't do at all. Better if you give me more FEAR!"_

Another shot came at us, this time from up ahead, but I was ready this time. I held up my blade, and I hit the blast back with all of the force I had. "Who's there? Who are you?"

"_Well it depends who you ask, doesn't it? You all seem to be doing well calling me a Prism. Which I'm perfectly fine with, actually."_ Whoever it was, they were anything but nice; a sort of disgust and sarcasm was laced in with whatever color was in they're voice. _"I've been called all sorts of names over the years, some of them nastier than others. Haven't I, Fox?"_

"Fox? What're they talking about?" I looked over at him, only to find that his colors, green in reaction to the threat, were slowly changing to a sickly shade of yellow-green as a full yellow crept into his eyes.

"N-no…not you. Not here, now…"

"_Yep. Believe it or not, Ripley, I'm here." _And then a flash of yellow blinded me, filling my eyes with an unbelievable amount of color. Once the color finally subsided, I looked back up, and she was there.

She was my height, but she couldn't possibly look more intimidating. Her hair was long, black, and wild; she looked like she had lived in these pipes her whole life. I looked at her hands, and they were crackling with the yellow energy, which wrapped its way around her like a cocoon of electricity.

"_Like I said, I've been called a lot of things. But as Fox can tell you, I prefer the name Jen."_

"Fox, how do you know her?"

He looked up at me, obviously in pain. "She…she's someone I knew before…She…" A tear ran down his cheek. "She's one of the ones I hurt."

* * *

Well, there you have it. The villain revealed. Or is it? For those of you who have been following so far, you know quite well things are never that simple around here!

As always, I ask that you review, and let me know what you think!


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts. At all. Period.

* * *

Chapter 10: Healing Old Wounds

Fox's PoV

No…No, why did she have to show up now? Why'd she have to show up ever?

Jen was my friend, back when I was caught between the light and the dark. To be honest, we were both incredibly screwed up even then; I've already explained my damage, but she had a different kind of damage altogether.

Jen was ostracized from the moment she started interacting with others her own age, isolated because of minute differences that separated her from others. It twisted her, made her bitter and prone to anger, and I was drawn to her as a friend because of that unbridled angst.

But while she was nothing but good to me, I took advantage of our friendship. When I became aware of my abilities as a Prism, I…practiced on her. I took the yellow and the red that I took in from my parents and forced them on her, refining it for the battles I would later have with the people who took away my innocence. It changed her. It…hurt her. I hurt her.

And look what came as a result. Jen came back into my life, hell-bent on revenge. And as much as I want to, I can't run away from this. I've got to make up for what I did, or else I'll never be able to forgive myself.

"_Well Fox? You ready to suffer like nothing you've ever felt before?"_

I wanted to help her, to make right what I had done wrong, and that was enough to bring the strength of my indigo back. My hand behind my back, I formed a small sphere of indigo in my fist. "I'm so sorry, Jen. I'll try and fix this, I promise."

The smug look on Jen's face melted away to a deadly serious frown. _"Wrong answer, Fox,"_ she droned, giving me just enough time to bring the orb of indigo in front of my chest before she blasted me again with the yellow.

The yellow never made contact. Instead, it stopped in midair, and then siphoned itself off into my indigo orb. "I can't let you do that, Jen. Let me help you."

"_HELP ME?"_ Her face contorted into a twisted rage, which was reflected in her colors of yellow and now red. _"YOU USED ME!"_

I darted out of her line of sight, a wise course of action, seeing as she began to attack everything in said line of sight. _"YOU MANIPULATED ME, USED ME IN ONE OF YOUR STUPID GAMES! YOU'RE JUST LIKE THEM, FOX; YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR PARENTS!"_

My heart ached listening to her; she was right, I had used her. But maybe, if I could just get closer to her…

She turned around to find me, howling like a diseased animal. This is why you should never become dependent on the red rage; it turns you into this. "I swear, Jen, I don't want to hurt you. Just let me in—"

She laughed—no, cackled—at that. _"Why not, Fox? It's not like you ever held back before!"_

And so it continued for what felt like hours, but I'm pretty sure was less than ten minutes. It's funny, how when you're fighting with someone, time just sort of takes a break and sits on the sidelines until all of the fighting is over with. She would attack, I would dodge; I would try to reason, she would spit some reply back. The circle of fighting continued on and on, achieving nothing, solving nothing…until, finally, I made one mistake, tripped up my footing only once. And she dove for it.

Before I even realized what that misstep had cost me, Jen had me trussed up in a web of solid yellow, a red scythe fully formed in her hands. Try as I might, I hadn't gotten through to her at all.

"_I told you, Fox; you manipulated me for far too long. Guess all the mind games made me pretty good at manipulation myself though, huh?"_ She brought the scythe close to my neck, close enough so I could feel the heat pouring out of it. Then, she turned it over, so that the flat of the blade was parallel with me—and pressed it against my cheek. I screamed for a lifetime as the blade made my flesh boil and burn, until I couldn't feel anything on my check at all.

After an eternity of pain had come and gone, Jen finally took the blade away. Tears were streaming down my face; I couldn't feel the left side of my face at all anymore. _"Well, as much as I'd __love__ to listen to __that__ song for a few months more, I do have a schedule to keep. After all, my benefactor only allowed me my power boost in exchange for yours and that Riku's heads._" Benefactor? _"So, I guess I have to finish you off here and now. Say good bye, Fo—"_

"_STOP HURTING HIM!"_

Before either of us could even react, a violet blast of light shot out at Jen, eventually engulfing the entire pipe in its intensity and making me to black out from the strain.

* * *

Riku's PoV

When I opened my eyes, all of the fighting had stopped. Everything was silent. Strange. The two of them had completely forgotten about me during the fight, but in the end I was the one to end the fight.

The entire stretch of pipe was covered in a rocky, crystalline coating of violet constructs. I couldn't believe that I had just created all of this; all I wanted was for Fox to stop hurting, and that was enough to make this beautiful, glowing cavern of crystals.

I looked at Jen; she was trapped in an ornate casing of the crystals, a coating of small rocks literally encasing every inch of her person. As small as the rocks seemed, they were incredibly tough, so tough that the only part of Jen that could actually move were her eyes. They were filled with a glowing red, but she couldn't burn her way through the violet.

Wait. Red, burn. Oh my god, Fox!

I ran over to Fox, hoping I could to dig him out of the violet crystals in time. The yellow webs holding him had been transmuted into violet, but they were still holding him trapped. Even more than that, the violet had formed a huge crystal around him; easily transparent, but from the looks of it completely solid. Fox could be seen inside, eyes barely open as he slipped into unconsciousness.

"Hold on Fox hold on c'mon you can do it just stay with me stay with me…"

I started clawing away at the crystals—only for them to crumble the minute I touched them, fading in a sparkling dust. I stepped back, calmed myself down, and pressed my palm against the giant crystal around Fox. It immediately shattered and dissolved into dust, leaving me to attend to Fox's wounds.

"Fox! Are you ok? Say something!"

"R-Riku…Ow…" That was all he could say; open his mouth anymore, and the burn would start to bleed. His eyes had this glassy look to them, like he wasn't all quite there. I was surprised he was still conscious, his wounds were so bad. His cheek looked like a cross between a glass bottom boat and a tanned cow hide; it was a sickly beige color, and I swear I could see veins running just under what was left of the skin.

"Fox, I'm so sorry. I promise, I'm going to get us out of here alive. This will never happen again, just hang in there…" I brought my hand up to try and wipe off some of the blood from his face, and my hand began to glow the violet light again. The violet jumped off my hand and began to run across Fox's face, weaving its way across the burn. By the time it was done, the individual strands had formed a patch across his skin. The strands began to merge, spreading out until they formed a single panel covering the wound. The light grew stronger, and stronger…until it shattered, revealing a perfect new layer of skin in its place. It was as if the burn had never happened.

"You see, Fox? I told you we'd be fine. Now let's get you out of there." I traced Fox's outline in the crystal with my hand, dissolving enough violet to get Fox out. As soon as he was out, he dropped down and took hold of my arms, gasping for breath. "Feel better?"

"It…It hurt…so much. Burning, and burning…" He put his hand up to his cheek, feeling the new skin. "I shouldn't be able to talk. Why can I…" He looked up at me. "You used the colors, didn't you?"

I smiled. "Something to keep in mind for next time, Fox; violet light heals wounds. Not to mention…" I motioned over to Jen, still trapped in the crystals. Her eyes were completely covered with the boiling red, but it couldn't break through the shell.

Fox crept towards her, looking more afraid of hurting her than being hurt by her. I can't imagine what he must have put her through to make her like this; I'd played his games before, but they were only a fraction of what he could evidently do.

"We need to help her. If she could just make contact with the indigo, learn to let go of her anger…maybe she can be saved." He turned back to me, stepping aside to give me easy access to Jen. "You wanna give it a try?"

Well, I couldn't really say no to that, could I? Not after the last display of power I gave. "Alright, hold on." I focused my mind on what Jen had gone through, the pain she must have felt, and it brought the indigo glow back into my hands. I stepped forward, preparing to make contact.

"How do I do this again? One hand on head, the other…?"

Fox smiled. "Well, in your case, it would be the right hand on her head, the left by her heart. You're right handed, right?" I nodded. "Then you should be okay. Give it a try."

I closed my eyes and lowered my head, taking a deep breath and clearing all thoughts from my head. If I was going to do this, I couldn't give her any fear to work with. Then, once I was completely calm with my position, I reached out and placed my right hand as close as I could to her face. As long as I kept the indigo running, my hand wouldn't break through the crystals, so there wasn't any risk of Jen breaking free. Then, I placed my left hand on the crystals around her chest, took a deep breath…and took the plunge.

...

When I opened my eyes, it looked like I was back in Fox's world. The colors were all around me, and that same feeling of weightlessness kicked in from before. Fox had prepared me for this though; I focused my energies on making something solid below me, imagining its size and shape and texture, until a solid green circle formed below me. I let myself drop down to the platform, and as soon as I established a sense of gravity, I stood up and took a better look around.

It may have looked like Fox's world at first, but at a closer glance…it was just so alien in comparison. With Fox, the predominant color had been the indigo, spreading out in all different directions, and there had been sparks of other colors moving all throughout the space. Here, the world was literally enclosed in a hurricane of yellow and red, spinning in an angry torrent that threatened to consume everything in its grasp. Thankfully, I had landed in the eye of the storm, so I wasn't hit with either color, but to see the two raging around me…it was mindboggling.

I looked down (or at least my version of down, are so topsy turvy in these places) and found what I was looking for; several yards below me was Jen, huddled in a ball in the empty space. She looked…different here. Shorter, softer. Her hair was neatly combed back, revealing what was actually a pretty face behind that long black hair. Her eyes were squeezed shut, with tears spilling down her face.

"Hello? Jen, is that you?" I let the platform drop down to her level.

"Leave me alone."

Well, she was friendly. I figured I'd better get to the point, in case she went off again. "I know it's hard, but you have to trust me right now. I can see that you're in pain, and I can help you. Do you want help?"

She opened her eyes and looked at me. She had green eyes, the kind that look like they can pierce you just as easily as a sword can. "Uh-huh."

"Then take my hand." I extended my arm towards her, extending little indigo waves from my fingers.

"Why should I trust you?"

"Because I know what Fox is capable of, and I can promise you that he will never hurt you again." All of it was true, though I knew it was a promise I didn't need to make; Fox was better now, but the promise was necessary to earn Jen's trust.

"You can?" Her head rose expectantly.

"Yes. Just take my hand, and I can make the pain go away."

She hesitated, debating whether she should take the leap of faith. Then, slowly, she reached out her hand to touch mine. As she did, the indigo wrapped around her hand to bond it with mine, and it shone with all of the light it had, forcing all other colors away and engulfing us in its brilliance.

* * *

Fox's PoV

It didn't take him too long to get the job done, but I got tired of waiting around pretty quickly. Actually, it was pretty boring, waiting on the outside for once. When Riku went in, he just sort of closed his eyes, an indigo glow coming from his entire body. Interesting, especially since I had never seen anyone else use the indigo before, but really nothing that you could focus on for longer than a few minutes. While he was in there, I took the time to clean up just a bit, taking in any unnecessary violet and storing it where I could use it later. To be honest, I was just a little jealous of Riku; I could never get the violet to do what I needed it to, and he managed to use it full throttle his first time out. Well, I'd get the hang of it sooner or later, especially with the amount of processed violet Riku had provided.

Anyway, after a while, Riku finally pulled the indigo back out, opening his eyes as he stepped back. What was left of the violet around Jen finally faded away. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment before closing again as she collapsed on the floor.

Riku turned to me with a solemn look on his face. "She'll wake up in a bit. I took most of the yellow and all of the red out of her, so we don't have to worry about another attack, but honestly? I don't think she did this alone."

I walked over to Jen, brushing the hair out of her face. "I could have told you that. The Jen I knew could come off as bitter and surly sometimes, sure, but she was never this vicious. I could see her being self-destructive, maybe make a show out of it on the way down, but she would never willingly hurt anyone the way she tried to hurt me just now." I closed my eyes; I could still feel that scythe on my cheek. That was going to take a while to get out of my head.

"My thoughts exactly." He brought up some of the red flames, which jumped at the first sight of air. "The yellow was naturally there, but someone put the red in there. It's trying to fight its way back to wherever it came from."

Poor Jen. No matter where she went, someone was always using her for their own means. I was going to make up for it though, starting now. "Later. Right now, we need to get her somewhere safe. Think you can keep that red locked up tight till we get back?"

"I'll do my best." He brought the red back inside, and crouched down beside me. "C'mon, think you have the strength to lift her out?"

* * *

Lord, THAT took forever to write! I kept going back, editing and adding more detail. I think I'm getting good at this!

As always, PLEASE REVIEW!


	11. Chapter 11

Oh my god; I just had the best idea! I had finished up the chapter before this one, and I was going to wait a bit longer than usual to post, but I saw something at school that just gave me some great ideas! Yay creative inspirations!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, just in case that hasn't been ingrained in your skull by now.

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Chapter 11: A Nice Change of Pace

Fox's PoV

As hard as getting in the pipes was, it was a breeze getting back out. With Jen out of commission, the yellow had stopped running altogether, so it was a simple matter lifting ourselves and Jen out of the pipes and back down to earth.

Already you could see a change in the world around the castle. The sky had completely cleared up, not a single yellow-infected cloud or raindrop in sight. Just out of curiosity, I sent out a pulse of indigo on my way down to the ground so I could get a feel for what was out there. Like I said, the change was obvious; I could feel the other colors making there way back into the world. We'd actually done it; we'd actually saved the world. People were…happy again. Hopeful.

"Where should we take her?" Riku looked down to me, taking some of his concentration off of the green platform he had been taking us around in long enough to actually talk. I mean, I was glad he took the colors seriously and all, but I swear if he didn't take his seriousness down from number 11 on the scale, I was going to have to really have a talk with him. Or a sparring match, whichever got the point across.

"Well, things seem to have calmed down out here. Why not take her inside the castle? I'll bet Leon's calmed down too."

Riku didn't seem entirely convinced, but he trusted my instinct enough not to argue. He changed the direction of our descent, finally landing just in front of the front doors of the castle. The doors themselves were large and incredibly ornate, with the same heart motif from the center of the castle appearing right in the middle of the doors. The doors were carved so as to look as though the heart was surrounded by long vines with large, forbidding thorns.

Riku shuddered at the sight of it; that design clearly brought back some bad memories for him. "Hm. The way Leon talked about the place, I thought they had gotten rid of all the changes the Heartless made."

I looked over at Riku with my best innocent look. Don't ask me why, but he always was a sucker for that face. "Maybe they just appreciate what makes up their history. A man from my world once said, 'Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'"

Riku looked down, avoiding any eye contact. "I suppose you're right. Let's go." We pushed the doors open and went inside, Jen in tow behind us.

"You sure you don't want me to hold Jen for you, Riku? You seem a little tired…"

"I'm fine, Fox. Let's just get somewhere safe."

After making our way down a long stone hallway, we found ourselves in a large, round hall with two winding staircases. There was both a fountain and a chandelier near the base of the staircases, and there were rows upon rows of suits of armor lining the walls. Who lived here, all that time ago? The money in here was almost impossible to count.

Riku walked into the center of the room, looking around nervously. His colors were all over the place, a mix of yellow and red and green. Whatever happened here, it was a story I had to hear, one way or another. "The floor plans may have changed since I was last here, so I honestly have no idea where to go from here. The bedrooms are towards the top floors, but I'm not sure if we can even get up there."

I thought about this for a minute; even if the castle had changed, Riku's knowledge of the old layout could be useful. "Put Jen down for a moment, would you?"

He did so, and I walked up and placed my hands on each of his shoulders. "Ok, just relax. I need to know what you know, or we'll be running around here all day." I called up the indigo, and extended it into Riku, trying to see if any of his memories could be of use. As I dug the indigo deeper into his heart, I could see entire floors laid out in front of me, every detail laid out as if he had seen the place yesterday. Sure, he didn't remember it all quite that clearly, but a little access into the subconscious never hurt anyone.

Anyway, I started looking through the places Riku traveled through most, in hopes of getting some sort of idea of how he went to and from anywhere back then. Most of his moving about was through corridors of darkness, which clearly did not have the best effect on him, but the few pedestrian explorations into the castle that I could find were mostly through debris covered hallways or out on the side of the building, where the wind from the passed storms would surely blow us off the side.

So, I moved on to the more nit-picky stuff. This was a castle after all, and who hasn't heard of a castle with at least one secret passageway? Anyway, I looked through as many rooms as I could; our current room, the dungeons, the basement, the library…wait, the library! From what I could tell, there was something there, behind one of the bookcases…

"_Come with me_." I took Riku by the hand and ran up the staircase, turning left towards the library.

Well, as usual, I had jumped from point A to Z without letting Riku know a word of what was going on, a habit he did not appreciate. "Fox? Use your words! Where are we going?"

"The library, dummy! You've seen what's in there, let's go!" I pushed through the door just to the left of the staircase, finding a library far more expansive than I had expected. The place was filled with books, far more than Riku had remembered. The bookshelves reached the very top of an already tall ceiling, and each one was accompanied by an extremely long, rolling stepladder that could reach any book one could want. I weaved my way through the maze of bookcases, letting Riku go so he could have the fun of a good chase.

"Fox! Where are we going?"

I ignored him, completely focused on the task at hand. I have a talent for that; I can shut out everything around me if that's what it takes to get the job done. "Ok, the stairs should be around here somewhere…" I took another turn, and found the stairs, a curved staircase leading up to a desk. I climbed up the steps, three at a time (I have long legs, so what?), stopping in front of the desk.

It was a fairly neat desk, with only a small lamp and a purple book on its surface. I picked up the book and blew the dust off of it. Yep, this was the one. I turned around on the ball of my left foot, facing the nearest bookshelf. It was crammed with books, except for one slot-like opening in the middle of the top shelf. Too easy. I let the green lift the book up and into the slot, which immediately caused a small "click" sound.

Riku finally caught up to me, bending over to catch his breath. "Ok, I've followed you through this god forsaken maze. Now calm down and tell me: where are we going?"

I pointed to the bookcase. "In there."

The bookcase began to creak as it slowly slid towards the side, revealing a hidden passage leading deeper into the castle. What did I tell you? Every castle has a secret passage!

The hallway wasn't very well lit, and we couldn't see much past the first few feet. "Well, where does it go, Fox?"

"I think I found something deeper inside the castle. _I felt it when I got here_, but I wasn't sure what it was till now. C'mon, I'll show you." I went inside, with Riku following behind me.

"This'd better be good, Fox. You know I hate it when you drag me around like this!"

I hated doing that to him, but these things never make sense to people unless they see it for themselves. Remember how the whole color explanation went before he came inside my head? An absolute train wreck.

Anyway, after a few minutes we could see a light at the end of the hall. I waited for Riku to catch up, and then we both walked to the end of the hall, into the light. We were finally here.

We found ourselves in a large, round, bright room. It was different from everywhere else we'd been in the castle; the walls and floors were coated with a silver metal, very modern for an old castle like this. The room was perfectly round, and in the center there was a large crystal suspended above a hole, just a hole in the ground where the floor tapered off for no apparent reason. The crystal itself was a dull brown color, solid and luminous, though it looked like it had certainly seen better days. It was attached to several wires above, but it seemed to be floating in midair more than hanging. Either way, I could tell without a doubt: this was what I had felt before.

"Well? What is it?" I looked over at Riku; time to explain.

I walked up to the crystal and put my hand against it, letting my indigo flow into it. It felt so easy, the crystal taking in the power like it had been starving for it. "_The residents of this world have always relied on light and magic more than most._ Believe me, you can feel the expended energy in the air once you've been around it long enough." As more indigo entered the crystal, its color began to shift to a subtle indigo at its core. "_This crystal used to hold the magic used to power everything in this castle._ That's how I could tell it was here; whenever I sent out a pulse of _color, it resonated with the power._"

Riku took a few steps closer, not entirely sure how to react to it all. I couldn't be sure why, but he seemed…uneasy. "Ok…Well, it doesn't look all that powerful to me. Are you sure this is it?"

"_The only reason it's this drained is because no one's been here to replenish it in months_, maybe years. My guess is that once the Heartless were…evicted, it was forgotten. But I can _fix it, give it color to power it again._" The indigo was flowing through me, faster and smoother than ever before. If I had kept contact just bit longer, I could have done exactly that. I could have given it all the power it needed…

Instead, Riku ran up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me away from crystal, severing any connection I had with it. He looked me in the eyes, which couldn't help but register the yellow and violet pooling in his. "Fox, you're fading in and out on me here. Focus. How does this help us with getting somewhere to sleep?"

I…couldn't understand…what I had done wrong. Wasn't I supposed to be fixing the crystal? "_Wh_-What? I…I'm _fixing the crystal_. I _fix_ things, that's what I do…" I could fix things, I could fight, and I could survive any—NO!

My back arched in pain as I felt the yellow take over and run through me. I-I tried to contain it, but I could feel it burning me out, moving faster and faster, frying my insides. I couldn't hold it, I had to let it out, I had to—

The violet crawled up my legs and onto my chest, hardening into diamond-hard crystal all along the way. As it made its way up my arms, I looked to Riku for answers, trying to understand what was happening. His eyes were closed as the violet spun out of his hands; he understood as much as I did.

"I'm sorry Fox, but I need to do this. You're not making much sense, and I need to stop you before you do anything bad. Ok?"

I nodded just before the violet sealed my head shut, but I was only as scared as ever. What was happening to me? And more importantly, why was it setting my triggers off again?

* * *

Riku's PoV

What the hell was going on?

Fox was perfectly fine until we got into the castle. As soon as we entered the main hall, his eyes glazed over, like he was in some trance. It only got worse once he used the indigo on me; his voice started mixing in and out of the colors, and the farther we ran, the worse it got. By the time we reached that crystal, Fox sounded like he was worshiping the thing. And when the yellow broke out when I confronted him…I just couldn't take any chances.

"I'm sorry Fox, but I need to do this. You're not making much sense, and I need to stop you before you do anything bad. Ok?"

I waited until he was completely enclosed in the violet to open my eyes. The way it had trapped him, his back was still arched back from the yellow attack. I couldn't bear to see him this way, but I forced myself to look. His eyes were full of yellow electricity, trying desperately to escape as he held it inside himself. At this rate, the yellow build up would move all through his body, mess with his organs, his heart rate…I had to do something.

So I walked next to him, put my hand on the violet covering his right shoulder, and closed my eyes, trying my hardest to let Fox know that I was there for him.

Please, I thought, Don't let the yellow eat you alive. Just let it out, let it run its course. You can't survive it unless you feel it, Fox. Trust me, we'll figure it out from there. Just don't give up.

Suddenly, Fox did just that. The yellow in his eyes spilled out over the rest of his body, running down his back and limbs too quickly to watch. I could feel them fighting the violet to break loose, and it took all my strength to keep the cracks in the violet they made from bursting open, but after a while the power slowed down. The yellow began to slow down, ultimately fading away into nothing. I let the violet relax, and the cracks burst apart, letting Fox fall into my arms. He was crying harder than I had ever seen him before, and as soon as he regained his balance he threw himself into my embrace, hugging me like he was holding on for dear life.

"What…what did I do wrong? I did everything right, I helped people, I did my best to stay happy. I tried so hard to keep it under control, Riku. Why can't I keep it away? Why?" He buried his face into my shoulder. This was so much deeper than I had ever thought the pain had gone in him. This was more than just scars from his parents; this was a pain without a wound, damage that came from somewhere none of us could see, colors or no.

"I…I don't know, Fox. I don't have a clue as to why this happens. But it happens, and we can't help that, not yet." I just stood there and held him for a moment, listening to him as he silently screamed into my shoulder. "You're not well, are you?"

He stopped his cries, completely still for a moment. "…No. No, I'm not. I don't think I have been for quite some time now."

I sort of laughed at that; the fact that Fox was using words like "quite" meant that he was starting to feel better. "Well, well is boring anyway. It's normal, and you are anything but normal. And that's a good thing. If you were well, we would never have found each other, would we?"

Fox let go of me and stood up straight. His eyes were puffy and red from the crying, but he was starting to smile again. "Yeah, I suppose so. Thanks, Riku." He surrounded himself in a green aura and floated over to the crystal. "Do you think we can try to use the crystal again? I know its tricks now, I'm prepared. And you'll be here for me."

"Of course Fox." I stepped forward and took his hand, wrapping our hands together with tendrils of violet. "I'm here. Go ahead."

He took a deep breath, squeezed my hand, and placed his other hand against the smooth surface of the crystal. We were connected by the violet, so I was able to feel everything Fox was doing, and I had no idea that this crystal could do what Fox was moving it to do.

As Fox poured his green light into the crystal, it went into the tubes connected to it and spread out to reach all corners of the entire castle. All of a sudden, we could see everything in the castle; Yuffie comforting Leon in the basement as he realized what he had done, Jen sleeping peacefully in the main hall where we had left her (bad move, I know, but neither of us were thinking to clearly at the time), and finally, we found what we were looking for. Up towards the top of the castle were several bedrooms, all with the same décor, but at this point we didn't care; we just wanted to get up to one of them and collapse.

"Ok, so there are the bedrooms. How do we get up to them?"

Fox turned around to look at me, his eyes overflowing with green energy. _"That's the easy part, Riku. Just watch."_ And he expanded the green to me, pulling me in closer to him as the world seemed to be swallowed in the green light. When the green finally faded, the scenery had changed; we were back in the main hall, with Jen lying on the ground beside us.

"So the crystal takes us wherever we want in the castle, huh?"

Fox gave me this half-smirk, half shrug. "What, no stuttering, no shocked face? C'mon, Riku, you're getting jaded."

I smiled back. "Not jaded, just comfortable. It's nice, learning more about what you can do. I'm not scared anymore, remember?"

"You mean what we can do." He reached down and touched Jen, letting the green extend to her too. "C'mon, I'm dead tired. I could use a good night's rest." And the green swallowed us again.

* * *

Ugh, that was hard! I took this in a million directions before I decided on this. Hope y'all liked it. Let me know what you think: REVIEW PLEASE!


	12. Chapter 12

And now, we swing back to the talking stuff and away from the adventure stuff for a minute. Just playing around with the characters, that's all.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts.

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Chapter 12: Lovely Accommodations

Riku's PoV

All things said and done, the castle was a good time. For all the craziness, it's something I'll certainly remember fondly.

Fox took the three of us upstairs to a long red hall lined with doors. It looked like some sort of hotel, which for all we knew it could have been; the castle was ancient, and it seemed to change landlords a lot. We carried Jen to the door at the far end of the hall and brought her to the bed. The room was nice, lots of red and brown furniture and carpets around a four poster bed. While Fox pulled back the sheets, I lifted her up and slid her into the bed. We got her all situated, drained some of the power out of the lights so she could sleep better (power from crystal is apparently very easy to manipulate when it's getting the power from the colors), and walked out into the hallway.

And, well…we weren't exactly sure where to go from there. I mean, Fox had been staying at my house since he arrived, but any sleeping arraignments had long been established; I stayed in my room, Fox slept in my parents' old room. And we hadn't…done anything yet either. It just…hadn't come up at all; we were so close without it, what with all the color stuff. There really is nothing more intimate than sharing your emotions like that. Now though…now we were in uncharted territory. For a few minutes, we just stood outside Jen's room awkwardly, completely silent. At least, I was awkward; while I just stood in the middle of the hall with my head down and my hand rubbing the back of my neck, Fox was leaned up against the wall, right leg bent, with his arms crossed and a slight smile on his face as he watched me.

"So, uh…I'll…see you in the morning, then?"

He stood back up and straightened his shirt, the one on top that was unbuttoned. I always like his sense of style; no one else I knew dressed like him, and when he used the colors that shirt flapped with the power like a cape. But then, in the most official, emotionless voice you could imagine, he said, "If you say so. See you then" and he walked into the room to the left of Jen's and closed the door.

Ugh! Why couldn't I have just suggested it? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Feeling like a royal idiot, I went into the next door over and slammed the door behind me, only to find a room identical to Jen's. It may have confirmed my hotel theory, but to be I couldn't have cared less at that point. I strode over to the nearest post on the four poster bed and, just to keep myself from going crazy, knocked my head into it three or four times. As soon as I lost the urge to jump out a window, I calmed myself down and fell on the bed, trying my best to fall asleep.

* * *

Fox's PoV

Ugh, Riku! That boy, he just has no idea how to go about the romantic stuff!

When I went into my room, I just let all the colors out, letting the yellow and violet race around the room to the point where anything that wasn't bolted down was scattered about. Riku doesn't know it, but I hold back a lot of what I'm feeling. If I didn't focus all the time, they'd never calm down.

Anyway, once I got those two out of my system, I sat down on the bed and calmed down any other emotions boiling up inside of me. After all, going to sleep with a busy mind always leads to sleepless nights. As soon as I could count to 50 slowly without any other thoughts intruding, I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes, letting sleep come to me.

Only…it wouldn't come. For half an hour I tossed and turned in the bed, but I just couldn't get Riku out of my mind. Why didn't he do anything? We've been through so much together, and he still feels uncomfortable enough to not say what's on his mind? To say what he wants? To me?

Well, no use trying to sleep with that on the brain. I sat up and brought my knees up to my chest, thinking about it all. I couldn't find any real solution to it; if he wasn't going to man up and say it, then I just had to live with it until he did. Or break it off, though that really was the worse option. Either way, I needed some way to get my mind off of it.

So, I did what I do best; I brought out the color and played with it. I started out with some green, drawing it out of my hands and into an orb in front of me. I pulled a small tendril out of the green and wrapped it into a ring around it, forming a construct similar to Saturn. Then, I let what was left of the orb in the center slowly fall the ground while holding the very top of it in place, stretching it into a long pillar that almost touched the sheets. As I raised the green up into the air, I let all the yellow and violet and blue out in little marble-like pieces. The marbles surrounded the green in a kaleidoscope of lights, spinning faster and faster, like planets around a sun. These colors were my world, and as long as I had them, good or bad, I was safe. I let them spin and grow, getting bigger and wilder, breaking out of their forms and engulfing the room in a whirlwind of power and color and life…

Until there was a knock at the door. "Fox? You awake?" Riku.

I jumped back under the covers, dragging all of the colors with me. "Ye-Yeah. C'mon in."

The door opened slightly, light spilling in. Riku poked his head around the door, looking in with a nervous look on his face. "I couldn't sleep either." He walked in, trying to see me in the dark. "You wore your clothes to bed."

Damn, he noticed. "Well…so did you."

He looked down, blushing at his obvious slip up. He can be a little self-conscious sometimes. "Oh, yeah. I guess so. No pajamas, so…" He sat down on the bed, trying to figure out what to say next. I just waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say; I wasn't going to make this easy, if he wanted something, he was going to have to ask for it. "You feeling better? After the whole crystal thing?"

Damn. "Yeah, I guess so. I wasn't used to dealing with that kind of magic, but I've adapted. You've got nothing to worry about."

"Good, good." He was silent for a bit. "Do…Do you mind if I join you?"

Finally! "No, hop on in." I lifted up the sheets and Riku climbed in, staying over on his side of the bed.

I giggled—I actually giggled like a girl—at the sight of this. Riku could be such a prude sometimes. "Well don't be shy, come closer." He hesitated, of course, so I turned over in the bed and hugged him, effectively forcing him to spoon. He flinched at first, but as soon as he saw that I wasn't going to do anything more he relaxed. After a moment, he took my hand into his, holding it as we laid in the bed.

I whispered in his ear, "You see? Was that so hard?"

"…No. This is nice."

I smiled. "I think so too." As calm as I was making out to be, I was ecstatic. For someone like me, who can barely contain their emotions for even a moment, being this close to someone physically…it was wonderful. It was better than I could have even imagined.

"Uh, Fox…?"

"It's ok, Riku. Let's just sleep, ok?"

He sighed in relief. Fine by me; things were good here, and as long as Riku stayed I knew we'd be fine. "Ok. Good night, Fox."

I brought him closer, happy to be in the moment. "Good night, Riku."

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Sappy, I know, but it felt right. PLEASE REVIEW!


	13. Chapter 13

Sorry if you didn't like the last chapter, thought I'd develop the relationship a bit more. Back to action!

Disclaimer: You know the drill by now

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Chapter 13: Another Game

Riku's PoV

I had a great night's sleep. Having Fox next to me just felt so…natural. I slept like a baby, completely comfortable with the situation.

"Mmm, Fox…?"

When I woke up, I turned over to talk to Fox, only to find that he was gone. I immediately sat up. "Fox? You still here?"

No answer. I looked around. This place was definitely a hotel or lodge or something once; same décor as mine and Jen's rooms. There was a bedside table on either side of the bed, and on Fox's side there was a piece of paper folded in half, so that it stood up in a triangle shape. My name was written on it. I reached over and picked it up, turning it over to see if anything else was written on it.

"Went exploring in castle. You should come. Hide and seek. Fox." I smiled just a bit; last night could have easily made things awkward between us, but Fox seemed as happy with me as ever. I got out of bed, grabbed some deodorant from the bathroom (just to make sure I was reasonably decent), and went out into the hall.

The lights hanging from the ceiling were like diamond plaques and they were made from the same crystal that powered everything in the castle, so it was a great place to enter the Crystal Network (I guess that's what you could call it, anyway). I figured I'd try and find Fox, so I reached up towards one of the crystal lights, extended my own green color into the circle, and entered the Network.

There was the usual sense of awe, as my senses extended to cover the entire building. Then, once that passed, I started focusing my energies on looking at a good place to start looking for Fox. Starting in one place and looking from there wouldn't work; Fox could easily pop in and out of anywhere through the Network. And even if he was exploring, he wouldn't go anywhere without knowing it was safe, or he'd risk having a color attack again. So where could he go?

Well, I figured Fox had sampled my memories of the place earlier, so maybe he went to see one of the rooms I spent more time in for himself. I checked, and there was still a crystal connection to the old meeting room, where Maleficent used to bring me to discuss plans for the Heartless. And of course, my inexperience at the Network got the better of me; one moment I was thinking about the meeting room, the next I was there, standing in the middle of the podium.

"What…?" I kneeled down, making sure I was really there and it wasn't just the crystal messing with my mind. Yep, everything was solid. "Huh." As convenient as the crystal was, actually driving it myself turned out to be a pain sometimes; focus on one spot too long, and it just spits you back out.

Either way, Fox didn't seem to be anywhere here. The room was completely empty, not to mention completely unchanged from what it was before. The Restoration Committee must have felt it better to preserve the history or whatever. There was one thing that had changed though; the dark portal to Maleficent's battle chamber had disappeared. Not that I wanted to go there—it brought back some bad memories—but I did find that strange. I wasn't sure if there was another entrance into that room, or if the room even existed in the castle itself. Well, it would turn up when it turned up. I set off, going deeper into the castle through an archway in the wall.

At the other end of the tunnel in the archway, I came to the place that changed everything, where I managed to break free of the darkness's hold on my mind, if not my heart; the Keyhole room. Again, the room was completely untouched, with the walls of the antechamber lined with tubes and pods. These were the pods we had kept the Princesses of Heart inside. Looking back, that should have been a sign that we had gone too far; holding innocent women hostage and keeping them sedated so we could use them as tools. I couldn't let myself get bogged down in the past though, so I moved forward, climbing up the stairs to the Keyhole itself.

Now, here is where things began to look…different. Before, the portal to the inner Keyhole was contained to a heart-shaped archway, which in turn was plugged into a convoluted system of tubes and wires. Now, the archway had been split open, and while the portal still occupied the same space, the different colors inside it had spilled out to cover most of the back wall. Colors…Fox?

"_Riku! You made it!"_

His head and left arm poked out of the portal, a shining blue radiating from his eyes and hands. "Fox? What happened here?"

"_What? Oh, I don't know, I found it this way. Come inside, it's great in here! I've got another game for you!"_ He flashed me something resembling a wink—it was hard to tell through all the blue—and melted back into the portal.

Ugh, Fox! When he's not serious, he's as silly as he can possibly be. Well, he seemed coherent enough, so I figured I'd do what I do best around him; go with it. And with a running leap, I jumped into the portal and into the unknown.

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Fox's PoV

Wow. I mean, WOW. That place…it was beyond anything I had ever dreamed of being possible. And I've destroyed entire islands with my colors, so you know I've got a lot to imagine with.

This portal I found…I think it lead to the heart of the entire world. Inside, there was every color I had ever seen, in more abundance than any one person or creature's heart could hold. There was a real world object too, a rare occurrence in a place like this; a large, pale pink plaque, just hanging in midair, and all of the colors seemed to be flowing out of it. The plaque was just a blob of this coral-like material with a strange discoloration in the middle. It could have been shaped like a keyhole for a door, but I couldn't tell for sure.

So, when Riku came through the portal and into the colors after me, I turned around to face him, doing my best to fake pout. _"Awww, you found me…so much for hide and seek."_ I smiled at him, and he seemed to get the point. He looked around, strangely not surprised to see this place.

"So you found the Keyhole, huh?" I knew that's what it had to be!

"_Yep. I had no idea something like this even existed. Do you know what this is?"_

"Yeah, it's the Keyhole. It holds the world's heart."

I smiled, more in a coy, I-know-something-you-don't way than before; as much as everyone around here protested to know about light and darkness, there was just so little that they truly understood. _"Well, yeah, but what is the heart of a world exactly?"_ I lifted my self above Riku, spinning around as I did so. _"Every living thing in a world…they're all connected. How they interact sparks the colors they create, and these colors come together to create this heart. Try calling up a color."_

Riku got that concentrated look on his face, the look he gets every time he tries to use the colors, but as soon as he did so a huge burst of green sprouted out of his hands, propelling him up to me. "Wh-What? I…I didn't even really try! All I did was think for a second…"

"…_and the color came, I know. We're not just drawing from ourselves here; we can access any color on the planet."_ I brought the blue around me back inside, leaving just myself floating alongside Riku. "Now we get to play a game. If we can draw anything from here, and as much of it as we want…that makes this the perfect training ground, does it not?" I smirked and floated from Riku, preparing for what was about to happen.

Riku obviously got the message too; he smiled and drew his right hand back. "You're on." And he punched forward, sending a stream of green fire heading right towards my chest.

Thankfully, I saw it coming a mile away, dodging it with the slightest movement to the side. _"Very nice, you're consciously trying your hand at a direct offensive position. Not bad—for a newbie."_ I took the time to shoot some streamers of indigo at him, just to add insult to injury.

Riku was prepared though, and he absorbed it with an indigo shield of his own—which was just what I was counting on. As he brought my indigo into himself, I shot a single spark of yellow at him. The indigo acted as the perfect conductor, letting the yellow travel through his shield to graze him on the shoulder. Of course, graze being a very mild term for zapping him with in essence electricity.

The shock flew him back about ten feet before he was able to regain a sense of balance. Once he did, he looked over at me, anger in his eyes. "What the hell…?"

"_For all of your strength, you're far too direct for your own good, Riku."_ I smiled as I conjured up several orbs of orange and blue. _"They aren't just blunt weapons; they create, they build, they react. Use that to your advantage."_ I threw the orbs directly at him. He tried to block them by encasing himself in a violet crystal, but the blue orbs managed to bond with the crystal and pry it open, leaving him open for the barrage of orange. Too bad, it seemed the battle was going to be over before it had even begun.

But then, never underestimate Riku. Before the orange could hit him, he opened an indigo portal directly behind himself and disappeared, closing it before the orange could make contact. I pulled up several orbs of each color to surround me; if Riku was going to try some sort of sneak attack, he wasn't going to make it through to me without a fight.

But then he reappeared, poking his head out of a portal above my head. There was a red orb between him and me, and I thought I would be safe with that precaution alone, but Riku didn't try to attack; instead he simply reached out, took in the red with an indigo tendril, and went back inside, portal closing behind him. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, he began repeating the process over and over all around me, taking out two to three orbs each time. I scrambled to assemble more orbs, but his popping in and out broke my concentration, and before I knew it I only had the green left to defend myself. Finally, Riku came completely out of the indigo, arms surging with yellow electricity as he charged forward.

The dummy wouldn't learn; you can't hit me head on! He immediately smacked into the green dome around me, his arms outstretched on its surface.

"_Didn't I just tell you not to be direct? Looks like I hold all the cards now."_ I started unfolding the green, disconnecting it along the edge behind me and folding it to ensnare Riku.

But he just stared at me with this smile on his face. He hadn't discarded the yellow in his arms; on the contrary, it was crackling more than ever. "Oh, but you don't. One thing you forgot, Fox. What emotion goes best with fear?" Even as he said it, I could see the color building up in his eyes, around his hands and face. I tried to pull back, but it was too late. He pointed at me and uttered the name responsible for my defeat. _"RAGE."_

A stream of burning hot red poured out of his hands and mouth, swirling as angrily as a flood from a broken dam. The red washed over me, and I closed my eyes to prepare for the burning—only there was no pain. I opened my eyes, and found that I had been trapped in a giant red cube, with each face easily ten feet long. I tried ramming the side of the cube with every color I could, but it was no use; everything that wasn't incinerated by the red was sucked in by the orange orbs floating just outside the cube. And of course, standing right next to one of these orbs was Riku himself, a look of arrogance about him as he acknowledged his victory.

"Look's like I one-upped at your own game, Fox." He smiled and reached out his hand as the cube burned itself into nothing.

I wanted to be mad at him, but I couldn't. In a weird way, I felt proud; I managed to teach him how to use the colors in a way that was completely his own, so much so that I couldn't even circumvent it. Yet, anyway. I took his hand and shook it. "Yeah, I suppose so."

"Ugh, boys and their stupid little fighting games. Honestly, I don't know why I stick around." We both whipped around to find something neither of us had been expecting; Jen had woken up, and she was standing at the door to the outside, arms crossed as she gave us a sour look. "I guess I'm just curious as to how you two have survived so far."

"Jen?" I couldn't believe she was still awake; maybe things were going to turn out alright after all…

"Don't move, Fox." Riku brought out his blade and pointed it at Jen, ready to send a blast if need be. "You'd better not be thinking of trying anything. We know all of your tricks."

"Please, I'm not going to hurt you or anything. I'm not that shallow." She flew up to our level with a look on her face that seemed somewhere between arrogance, contempt, and…relief. Yep, it was Jen alright, the real Jen this time. "I'm just here to see if you've found him yet."

Well, now I knew how Riku felt around me sometimes; who is "him"? The cryptic stuff can be kind of irritating on the other end of it all. "Him?"

"You know, the brunette boy? Sora, maybe? Or have you not noticed that he hasn't been around since you first came here?"

Oh shoot. She was right, I'd completely forgotten about him. "But…but he's with Yuffie, right?"

She looked me dead in the eye, a serious look on her face. "Nope. Trust me, the same guy who gave me the colors took your friend not too long after that. And judging by your faces, you haven't found him yet, so whether you like it or not I'm helping you find him."

Ok, Jen was moving too fast even for me. "Wait, who are you talking about? Who's this guy? And how do you know he's got Sora?"

After I said that, this look of fear entered her eyes for a split second, before she turned her back to me, fists clenched and shaking. "All I know is that whoever he is, he turned my mind inside out and forced me to attack you two and bring your friend to him. If we find Sora, we find him, and I'm not going to let him get away with what he did to me."

We had a lot to talk about.

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Now that was a lot of fun! The imagery was just spinning out so quickly!

Please review, as it is greatly appreciated.


	14. Chapter 14

Whew, I'm so glad I have actually readers again. For about a week next to no one was reading at all!

Anyway, thanks for reading, and by all means, more people than just Dawn of Dusk can review. Any constructive criticism is encouraged, and frankly, desperately needed. So please, REVIEW!

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts

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Chapter 14: The Darker Side of It All

?

_So, they know about me, huh? Well, it was bound to happen eventually; they may be from the light, but even with that against them, they're smarter than you'd think._

_Sora…now that I have you, it's only a matter of time. All of the pieces are falling into place. All I need is the other one…

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_

Jen's PoV

These guys had absolutely no idea what hit them, did they? I'm abrasive, sure, but they were speechless around me.

We had all gone back to my room, with the two of them sitting side by side in on the long seat at the end of my bed. They're backs were so straight, I thought they were going to jump me if I made any sudden movements. I walked around the room, finding ways of avoiding the subject by critiquing the cleaning around the place.

"What a dump, huh? Seriously, when was the last time someone dusted in here?" I swiped my finger along the top of a table, and my finger came up coated in dust.

The boys looked at each other, trying to decide who should go first. Those two had to be dating if they could sit this close for this long, they were just so sickeningly…happy-couple around each other. Not just now either; I mean, private sparring sessions? In a secluded part of the castle? Seriously?

"…N-Nice to see you're feeling ok, Jen." Of course Fox would speak first, what with his guilty conscience.

"Well, I'm glad too, thank you very much." I turned around to the two of them, figuring that while I was at it I could throw a curveball or two to psych them out. "Glad to see you're out of that closet, by the way. Hey Riku, you wouldn't believe what this guy used to do in middle school to keep his little secret…"

Before I could push anymore buttons, Fox practically leapt out of his seat and clamped a hand over my mouth. "There-There'll be time for that…trademark sense of humor of yours later, Jen. Right now, we need to talk about Sora, right Riku?" He had a huge grin on his face, but before his little boyfriend could notice he sent a spark of yellow and red up his hand and in my mouth. Apparently, he was using it to send me a message, one I heard loud and clear ringing in my head:

_Shut __up__, Jen. Now is __not__ a good time, and last I check you weren't exactly blameless in the whole ordeal._

I pulled away from Fox, a smirk on my face. "Well, look who's still got some fears in his past. I'll bet he doesn't even know about—"

By the time I had gotten that much out, I noticed that something was snaking its way around my arms. In an instant I was slammed against the wall, arms held back above my head by green vines. Riku had pulled out his blade, and he placed it right under my chin.

"You don't get to play the smart-ass here, not after the first impression you left with me earlier. Either calm the hell down and treat us with the respect we've shown you, or get ready for more pain than you ever thought possible. Your move." We stood there for a moment, staring each other in the eyes. I don't know what his damage was with me, but he looked like a holy terror. He wasn't bluffing.

"Ok, geez, let go of me alright? I'll be good, I promise." He looked at me for a moment, then let me go, dropping me to the floor. I got back to my feet, trying to read what Riku was going to do next. Maybe Fox was right; now wasn't the time to defend myself from the likes of Riku, not with the old tactics. "…Sorry about that. Bad habit. You were saying?"

"That's better, Jen." Fox came to me and put his hands on both my shoulders, trying to be as clear as possible. "Now…the guy who's doing this…do you know where he is? Any idea at all?"

Oh…him. Right. I pulled away, walking towards the door to look at the crystal lights out in the hall. I don't know why, but ever since I woke up, those crystals have been…comforting for me to look at. Maybe it was because of the role they played in my getting here, but whatever the reason I just needed to feel safe before I talked about this. "He took me to his world, when I fell from our world. There's no light down there, just darkness that goes on forever. He…he forced the colors into me, kept running them through me until some of them stuck. And then he filled me with all of this red and yellow, and next thing I knew he had just…dropped me in those pipes, and left me all alone…"

Fox came up behind me, trying his best to comfort me. "I know that isn't easy, being all alone like that. I'm going to make this up to you, Jen. As soon as we can, we're going out to find Sora, and you're coming with us."

I turned around, a red hue reaching out from my arms. I wasn't even aware I could still do that after the pipes. "No. No, if I'm coming with you, it's so I can help you in anyway I can and get the dirt bag behind all of this. I don't want you thinking you owe me; I've got enough on my mind as it is. If we do this, it's as equals. Got it?"

He looked at me with this hurt look in his eyes…and then he smiled. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. Good to have you back." And he came up to me and gave me a hug before I even had a chance to react. He held me tightly, too tight for me to break free, so I just gave in and let him hang on.

"In that case, when do we start?"

"As soon as possible." Riku stepped up to break us up. He was one to keep an eye on, that's for sure. "If what you say is true, then our target is somewhere in the Realm of Darkness, and there's only one sure fire way to get there: The World That Never Was. Meaning we've got a lot of training to do before we head down."

Fox nodded. "Right. Well, you know more about the place than us; lead the way."

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To any who know who I am, I'm not pulling the OC's from the present day, just old files. Go with me on this.

As always, REVIEW!


	15. Chapter 15

Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up; I hit a serious writer's block. Ah well, I'm here now, aren't I?

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts.

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Chapter 15: Into the Dark, With New Allies

Fox's PoV

A week later, we had just landed in The World That Never Was; specifically, an old alleyway in the ghettos of the city. Riku knew exactly where to land, thank goodness, but even he had a hard time trying to find down to the ground; according to him, the in-between places had become…unstable since the last time he had entered them. Even outside the world itself, large storms had formed throughout the empty space, creating such horrible turbulence that Jen and I had to take turns using the Gummi Ship's bathroom to throw up and get over our air sickness. It stuck to high heaven, as though the cockpit weren't small enough with three grown humans inside it.

But we did manage to land safely, and as soon as we were safely beamed down Jen and I ran full speed for the trashcans in the back of the alley, making sure we got everything out of our systems. Riku just stood there and shook his head.

"You know, Sora's a horrible driver compared to me, and no one through up in during his flights even once."

Jen, ever the aggressor, popped her head out of the trashcan and gave him the evil eye. "Well excuse me, Charles Lindbergh, but I don't see him trying to kamikaze his way through a full blown hurricane out there!"

Poor Jen, she had been on edge ever since we'd left Hollow Bastion. She wanted to wait another week, see if she could get a better hold on her colors, but we couldn't wait any longer. As it was, she'd been training non-stop for a week, and all she could do was conjure up more of the same red and yellow from before. I wanted to help her more, but she insisted on trying everything herself. She would just shrug me off and say, "If I can't fight on my own, then how the hell should I be useful to you?" And with that, she would do what she did everyday: go into the Keyhole room, pull in as much color as she could, and spend the day fighting herself as the other colors faded out of her grasp.

Needless to say, all of the stress had really done its toll by the time we landed. I thought she was going to bite Riku's head off, which she could probably do with the yellow at her disposal, so I pulled her back with a green and indigo-coated arm.

"Pull it in, Jenny. We've got work to do, remember?"

She looked back at me, ready to turn that sharp tongue of hers on me too—when suddenly she froze. Her face turned to one of puzzlement as she turned up towards the sky, pointing upward like a little child. "The sky…guys, look."

We both looked up at the sky, which definitely seemed to merit Jen's surprise. Even in Hollow Bastion, there were a few stars to light up the night. Here though, there wasn't even that; the sky was completely dark, not a single light in sight. The only reason we could still see was because of the light coming down from the beacon that beamed us down from the ship.

"Riku…that storm we came through…it's blocking out all of the stars." I felt a shiver go up my spine as I said it; the darkness just made that lonely feeling come back, the one I'd always hated to have. "That can't be normal."

He looked back down to me, deep in concentration. "No. My guess is that this is what happened after the Nobody incident."

Nobody? He hadn't told me anything about a Nobody incident. "What do you mean Nobody? Did something happen here?"

He looked at me incredulously, the same way he did when we first met, and grabbed me by my shoulders. "You don't know? Fox, they almost destroyed everything! How could you not…oh, that's right. You came afterward." He let me go and started walking over to the end of the alley, turning right to get to the main street. "C'mon, I'll explain along the way. Just try and keep up, it's one hell of a story."

I turned back to Jen; just to be sure she had a level head. She looked me in the eye, scoffed, and ran over past Riku and down the street. Riku stepped aside to let her through, and we ran to catch up with her. If I needed to hear about this, she was going to have to listen too, no matter how pissed she was at him.

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Riku's PoV

Once we got a hold of Jen (actually, Fox zapped her with enough blue to cancel out her yellow and slow her down so we could keep up with her), I started telling them everything that had happened with the Nobodies last year, and their scheme to create an artificial Kingdom Hearts.

For once, I actually had Fox stumped. "So…why did they need Kingdom Hearts again?"

"They thought that it could give them hearts of their own. Nobodies have bodies and souls, but their hearts were lost to the Heartless a long time ago."

"But, without their hearts, how do they…feel anything?"

I figured I'd better get straight to the point, make sure I didn't confuse him. "They don't. But they remember what they're like and they use that knowledge to get what they want."

Jen, who still insisted on walking a few steps ahead of us, laughed at that. "They won't get past us, will they Fox? I mean, they can try to fake it till they make it or whatever crap they have in mind, but we'll see right through them. No hearts, no colors, right?"

She looked back at us with a devilish grin, only to find Fox looking down at his feet, little yellow sparks trailing in his footsteps. "I don't know…I've met people who sound like that, and it's been different each time. Some of them have a little color; some have this weird texture to it. And some of them…some of them didn't have anything. No color at all."

He grabbed the sides of his shirt, the one he wears over his tee-shirt, and wrapped it around himself, trying to block against the cold. I knew better though; he was trying to comfort himself against whatever memories this was dredging up. He stopped in his tracks, talking to himself more than either of us. "No color means nothing to feed off of. Nothing to feed off of…I can't survive that alone." He looked up at us with the eyes of a scared little boy, a look I had seen so many times before. "Guys? Promise me that if we run into one of those Nobodies, you'll try and take them out before they get to me. Ok?"

"Oh…Fox." I stepped back towards him and took his left hand out from under his arms and into my hand. "You know we will. We'll be here for you, always. That's the way this works. Besides, most of the really bad Nobodies are gone, only the small fry are left, and they're not an issue. I didn't mean to scare you, ok?"

Fox nodded yes, still seeming a bit startled, but before he could say anymore Jen called for us to come to the end of the street. Of course, she had already run ahead and found something more interesting while I took care of Fox. I swear I don't get that girl; she's the most abrasive, stubborn person I know, not to mention she's as sympathetic as a Dusk with a grudge. Still, Fox likes her, so I have to deal with it either way. I pulled Fox along as I made my way down the street.

"Took you two long enough. What's this place?" She pointed ahead of us to a place I knew all too well: the Memory's Skyscraper. It looked exactly the same as I remembered it, an ominous tower of windows filled with eerie light, looming over the dark. I've spent too much of the past few years here…but it didn't matter. We'd found our bearings in the city, and now we could figure out where to go from here.

"This building serves as a hotel, a sort of watchman over the city." I looked around to make sure we were alone; we were. "This is the central landmark of this world. If anything's here, it can't be too far from this place."

I started walking calmly over to the front doors, nervous as hell but not wanting to show any of that to Fox and Jen. I knew they could see the yellow in me all the same, but I at least wanted to make the effort. But once I reached the center of the square, about halfway to the front stairs…they appeared. A few feet ahead of me, about five puddles of thorns formed seemingly from nowhere, rising and growing until they faded away to reveal a horde of Dusks. As soon as they had risen completely another line of Dusks rose behind them, until about twenty or so all stood in this…military procession, all standing perfectly still. Despite the loss of their leaders, they were more organized and efficient than ever before. I brought out my Way to the Dawn blade and immediately began strategizing, the way my years of training had taught me to.

"Fox, take the Dusks on the left. Jen, you take the right." I expected to see some flashes of color speeding past me, but for a moment all was silent. The Dusks stayed completely motionless, waiting for one of us to make the first move. Hell, I was waiting for the first move too, but for what seemed like forever none came. "What are you waiting for? Attack them!"

I turned my back to the Dusks, only to find Fox and Jen giving me these strange looks. Fox started walking towards me, indigo and yellow swirling in his eyes, while Jen simply held still, trying to assess whether or not I'd finally lost it.

"Riku, what are you talking about? There's no one there, I don't see anything. Are you ok?" Fox looked so concerned for me, trying to understand what was happening, but I still couldn't believe it. An army of Nobodies was standing just a few paces away from us, so why couldn't he see them?

It didn't matter; we were in danger every second these monsters were among us. I raced up to Fox, grabbed him by his shoulders, and spun him around to stand between me and the Dusks. I pointed at the Dusk army, trying desperately to help him see.

"Are you crazy? They're right there! Shoot'em with a blast of green or something!"

But it didn't do any good; Fox stared out into the square, but he couldn't see them. In the meantime, the Dusks had done something I'd never seen before; they'd reacted to our actions. Usually, unless they're attacking, lowly Nobodies usually stay completely still, conserving their energy for their next task. Now though, the minute I put Fox between us, the Dusks in the front had…tilted their heads slightly to the side, as if they were curious as to what Fox was. By the time Fox had turned back to me, they had turned to their compatriots and started what looked like conversing, making those weird sounds of theirs as they seemed to get more and more excited.

"Riku, something's obviously wrong with you. There's nothing there, it's just an empty square, same as when we got here." He started to move the indigo down to his arms, probably so he could see what was going on in my head. As wrong as he was about what was happening, he did want to help. "Let me inside, I'll see what's wrong."

But the second the indigo jumped off his arms and into the air, all of the Dusks whipped their heads back around to face us. Then, as quickly as they could, they all collectively began to swirl in the air, flying straight towards us.

"Fox, get back!" I jumped forward and hit the nearest Dusk, sending it flying across the square. I attempted to do the same with several more, but it just wasn't enough; about half of them managed to get past me, and began attacking Fox, and eventually Jen. The two of them were both scared out of their minds as they were knocked about the Dusks like a couple of ping-pong balls.

"Riku? What's going on?" Fox's face was that of pure terror as he attempted to send out streamers of yellow, only to miss the targets he couldn't even see. "Why—why can't I see them? Why—"

"_Rrrrrgh!"_ While Fox was at loss for battle, Jen seemed to have adapted very easily. From what I could tell between matches between Dusks of my own, Jen had unleashed every bit of red color she had, lashing out and knocking back several Dusks at a time. The only problem was that she couldn't see them either; she was just unleashing her frenzy upon whatever she could, frenzying about like a rabid animal.

Still, even with Jen, the battle was quickly being lost. I could blast them with a dozen dark flames a minute, and Jen could tear them to pieces, but they were winning by shear numbers. Every time one went down, three more would rise from the thorns to take its place, and soon we were facing off literally hundreds of them, all striking with a force I had never seen coming from a Nobody. It was almost as if there was…passion in their strikes. But how was that possible? Nobodies don't have hearts; they can't feel passion, can they?

Whatever the reason, soon they caught up with me, and I was forced onto the ground by the shear weight of all the Dusks. I looked up, but all I could see through all of the Dusks was Fox, his eyes squeezed shut as each of his limbs was held tightly by about five Dusks each. It took a minute to realize what they were doing; they were fighting over him, practically pulling him apart as they fought amongst themselves for their prize.

"Fox! Fight back, please!" I wanted to help him, maybe send some color of my own his way, but before I could conjure some up my face was pressed into the ground by even more Dusks, blocking out what little light there was and leaving me in the dark.

For a moment, I thought that this was it, that it would all be over any moment now. All I could think was how I would never see Fox again, and I began to cry softly, resigning myself to the crushing weight above me. But before I could, a familiar voice—his voice—cried above the rage of the battle.

"_I don't care what or where you are, I won't let you won't hurt him. You want hearts, you want emotions? I'll give them to you. Rarrrrrgh!"_

And then, in a way that seemed to be almost second nature to him now, the world exploded in a world of green.

* * *

Fox's PoV

After I unleashed the green, things became relatively peaceful. Fortunately, the green was enough to cancel out Jen's red and calm her down, but Riku wasn't anywhere close to prepared for it. For the moment, it was just me and Jen, waiting for Riku to wake up.

"Why do they keep doing that?" Jen was just barely audible, whispering so as to avoid being heard by them. She and I were floating just in front of Riku, trying hard not to look back at them.

"I'm…not really sure. I think they feel…loyal to us." It was so strange; they felt so…different now, more…subdued. I didn't know how to I was going to explain this to Riku, what with their history. I just had to hope he'd trust me to keep them under control.

"Hey, Fox, look. He's waking up."

Sure enough, Riku slowly raised his head and placed it in his hands, cradling what must have been one whopper of a headache. He looked up at us, then saw the crowd of them behind us and immediately jumped up and brought out his blade. "What the hell are they doing?"

"It's ok, Riku, I can see them now. We both can." I dropped back down to earth and put my hand on his blade hand, easing it back down. "The green…it fed them, somehow. Now they feel something. And they want to help us." I turned around, facing an entire army of Dusks. They were changed now—their suits coursed with veins of green—and they were all bowed down of one knee like a legion of knights, swearing their fealty. To me.

"They're not evil, Riku. They just wanted to feel something. And now they do. I'll keep them under control, you'll see. They can help us find Sora." I turned to Riku, letting the hope in me spread to my eyes. He wasn't exactly convinced, but he wasn't attacking them yet either; he simply stood there, arms crossed and head down as he considered what this meant. "They need us, Riku. And we need them."

"…alright." He looked me straight in the eye, a mix of fear and will clearly visible. "You know I trust you, and they seem calm. But I swear Fox, if they start causing trouble, it's on you. We have to take this seriously, alright?"

"Alright. Now give me some time. I need to talk to them for a bit, alone."

* * *

You know, when I started writing this, I had something completely different in mind. Well, I guess the writer's block is officially gone now. YAY!

On a side note...Happy Halloween!

As always, R&R!


	16. Chapter 16

Well, time to keep going with the story! At this point, not many people are still reading, but what the heck, I love this story. I love bringing it together; weaving it all into the work it's become. I hope those people who are still reading are enjoying it too.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts.

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Chapter 16: Negotiations, Losses, and Overall Growth

Fox's PoV

"_Alright…so. Who am I talking to?"_

I stood on top of the stairs leading up to the hotel, looking down upon my…congregation of sorts. They raised their heads simultaneously, communicating through wordless motions amongst each other. It was…unnerving. I wasn't used to the whole worship component of their behavior yet, and now that they were discussing what to do next amongst each other, I just couldn't help it; a shiver went down my spine. They were just so…alien compared to what I knew; I couldn't get a read on them, color or otherwise. Thank god Riku and Jen had given me some space and gone ahead of us; I wasn't sure I wanted to explain what I was feeling in front of these…Nobodies.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the Dusks settled down and sorted themselves out. They had been in a large mass during the discussion, twisting about and around each other in some intricate dance, but now they separated back into the perfect rows and columns, exactly as they were before. There was one difference though; while the most of them dropped down to one knee and bowed their heads, a single Dusk stood up straight in the middle of them all, its face hidden behind a zippered hood but still clearly focused on me.

Like the others, this Dusk was draped in the green color it had taken from my blast. Strangely though, this one's color seemed different; it was more vibrant, more powerful than the others. My color had already begun to fade from the bodies of the Dusks, but on this Dusk the color had done the exact opposite, becoming more intricate and radiant with every passing minute. The green on this Nobody had a definite shape to it, a twisting, thorny vine that wrapped its way around the Nobody's arms and down its back. I did nothing, unable to think of a suitable reaction to this anomaly, so after a brief moment of silence the Dusk made its way through the ranks to stand in front of me.

"_I am the youngest of us; I remember best what it was to feel. As such, I have been chosen as spokesperson of our group, to negotiate a suitable agreement so as to achieve all of our respective goals. Do you understand?"_

And I thought my wording was difficult for people to get! This guy, Nobody, whatever, made me look like some sort of idiotic word jumbler. _"Uhhh…Yes, I do, I suppose. Can you help me? And how can I help you?"_

"_As I am certain you are aware, we Nobodies are without hearts by nature; we do not have the ability to feel any emotion whatsoever. However, with your recent arrival our conglomerate has found much reason for concern as well as curiosity. Your power, we have observed, works solely with emotions; controlling it, utilizing it, quelling it, as in the case of your associate, 'Jen'. We apologize for attacking you and your associates; however we meant only to observe more directly, to confirm our suspicions. The overt use of your power tempted some the less disciplined of our group to attempt to obtain it by force, thus proving our earlier hypothesis."_

Who was this poor soul? It took all of my concentration just to figure out what the heck these emotionless words of his meant, let alone keep up with him. _"…Ok…And your hypothesis? What were you all thinking?"_

"_Your power is emotion itself. By exposing us to it, you have allowed us to…__feel__ again."_ For the first time, the Dusk made a normal movement, albeit a small one; he raised his head towards the sky and relaxed his arms, letting them go limp. And his inflection…it had been a monotonous drone up until now, but then he had actually spoken as though he felt…joy? Relief? It was hard to tell; he gave me nothing to read but the same green. _"It… has been a long time since any of us have experienced anything of the sort."_

Then, realizing what he had done, he resumed his previous position of emotionlessness and returned to business._ "We would request that we continue traveling with you and your associates. We would like to continue analyzing the effects of your powers on our kind, and in return we can assist you in your efforts. We have overheard you discussing the loss of your 'friend', Sora, and we believe we may have valuable information as to his whereabouts. Would you be willing to go forward with this sort of arrangement?"_

Ahhh, I figured they had some sort of pawn to use against us. Give us what we want, or never see your friend again, huh? Spoken like a true emotionless manipulator. I could have turned him down, said to hell with your help, I won't be used and coerced like some petty little play thing of yours. And yet…

"_Yes. Yes, I would."_ I held out my hand. _"We'll help each other however we can. I promise."_

He must have been expecting something more along the lines of "to hell with you", because he jumped at the sight of my hand coming out towards him. He then, slowly, and with all the caution of a scared child, reached out and wrapped his fingerless hand around mine. _"Thank you. You will not regret this, I can assure you."_ We shook hands and he let go, standing awkwardly now that his intended goal was over and done with. As much as these Nobodies craved emotions, it was going to take a while for them to get used to the sensations they brought with them. _"I will go report to the others on our decision and prepare for when we set out. Thank you very much for your cooperation. You won't regret it, that I can promise."_ He turned towards the other Dusks and rose to the air, writhing as he prepared to jump back into his pack.

"_Wait! If you're going to represent them, then I should at least know your name!"_

He looked over his shoulder at me, and…I felt another shiver go up my spine. I still couldn't see his face from under that zipped up hood, but something about his presence at that moment…terrified me.

"_Volpex. My name is Volpex."_

The names I hear around here… _"Well, Volpex, I'm Fox."_

"_We know."_ And he jumped up into the air, landing back in the crowd and becoming swallowed in the subsequent rush of flailing limbs. The Dusks had been watching us in interest the whole time, and now that we were done they were eager to talk with Rozor and see what the verdict was.

Well, at least they were happy. I turned away from them, looking towards the glowing glass doors leading inside the hotel. The light, creepy as it was at first, was actually very comforting; just as they said, a light to watch over the dark. That is, it usually was—except for now there was a small dark spot in the light, just at the edge of the left door.

"You can come out now, Riku."

True to form, the dark spot grew into a large shadow, until it was large enough for Riku to step out of the darkness and back down to the sidewalk. "You agreed to help him?"

There was a tint of anger to him, in both his voice and his color. I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to attack the red, and answered him quite simply. "Yes."

"Even after they practically threatened Sora?"

"Yes."

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, sighing with frustration. "Fox, Nobodies are manipulative by nature. You have to keep control around them, or they'll play us like a harp."

"That's not how I work. You know that."

He looked up at me incredulously. "'Not how you work'? Fox, are you kidding me?" He ran up and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me vigorously. The physical contact was too much for me; the stoic façade I had been maintaining broke and I felt the yellow and red flow into me. "These aren't real people we're dealing with here, they're not normal people who you can read every little thing they're thinking and feeling; they're just a bunch of heartless predators looking out for themselves! I've dealt with these guys before—"

"No, you've dealt with a few psychopaths with too much power on they're hands." I snapped at him and pushed his hands off of me. I hated verbally attacking Riku, my Riku, like this, but I had to say this before his logic superseded my own. "These people—"

"—Nobodies—"

"—those people are alone, practically defenseless, and from what you've told me, recently liberated from an oppressive organization of evil zealots. They're numb; they can't feel anything without their hearts. Can you possibly imagine what that does to someone? I had to live that way for years to survive my parents, and now I've made it to the other side, I'm whole again, and if you think there's any possibility that I'll just walk away from someone who's feeling the same pain that I've felt, you have another thing coming. Got it?"

Riku just stared at me for a long time after that, eyes wide at what I had just done. I…I couldn't believe what I had just done. "…Oh…oh, Riku, I—I'm so sorry, I just…I—"

"Save it. If you wanna work with these psychos, that's fine, just don't expect me to follow along." He turned away from me and pulled out his blade, avoiding my gaze. "I'm going to find Sora. You do what ever you want."

"Riku, no!" But it was too late; he'd already jumped over the side railing and started running down the street. Within minutes he was out of sight; I couldn't even feel him anymore.

There's no other way to put it; I cried for a while after that. I couldn't help it; Riku was everything to me, and now he was gone. How could he just leave me all alone like this, after everything we'd been through together? I just lost it; I dropped down to my knees and started sobbing, holding myself for what little comfort it gave me. I was all alone, in a strange world with no one I really knew. What was I going to do now?

"_Fox?"_

I felt a hand touch my back. I looked up, and the Dusk rep, Volpex, was standing over me. His face was covered as always, but I could feel his gaze on me. It felt…comforting, oddly enough. I looked at his arm, the one on my back, and saw that he was pouring his green into me, giving back the emotion I had given him. _"Volpex…no. This is yours; you need it more than I do. Keep it, please."_

"_I insist. You are in emotional distress, and my fellow Nobodies know that it will be easier to work together if we are all satisfied. Also, I am…concerned for your well being. You seemed…close to him."_

Heh. For all of the precision he put into his speech, he did care. It was sweet of him to care, even though he would probably deny doing so; he was a Nobody, he probably wasn't even close to comfortable with feeling anything along those lines. _"Th—Thanks, Volpex"_

"_It is no trouble at all. In fact, we can help alleviate your symptoms, if you wish."_ He turned and beckoned to the others Dusks, about five of which squirmed up to join us.

"_Volpex…no. I can't keep myself from feeling my feelings. That's how emotions work. You can't deny them; only work through them."_

"_I know, I remember. We won't leave you numb, we simply wish that you let us in, and let us help carry the burden. People help their companions when they are in distress, correct?"_

He did have a point. These people, Nobodies or no, they cared about my well being. _"Alright. Hold on."_ I relaxed every muscle in my being, and stopped fighting; I let all of the yellow and violet and red I had been holding in over Riku spill out of me.

The colors came out in a semi-solid state, like a cross between water and gas that slithered out of my body and into the air. The Dusks reached out and caught each and every tendril, taking them into themselves. Some of them didn't have the best reactions; those that caught the yellows and reds writhed in pain upon making contact, but they were well taken care of. Their fellow Nobodies cared for them, sharing their violet and what little green they had left to help neutralize any harmful effects.

And as they all began to feel the sensations of the colors, I began to feel them less and less. The pain of losing Riku…it was still there, just…lessened, enough to give me a sense of peace. It's funny; as my pain subsided, I began to get a better understanding of Riku's position. It wasn't his fault; he knew only those Nobodies who lived for power, for manipulating others. He had been taught that all Nobodies were like that, ignoring the fact that before they lost their hearts, they were people, with their own motivations and personalities. All people deserve a second chance, a chance at a better life, regardless of their personal inhibitions.

As I realized this, I felt completely at peace, and with that an indigo light began to shine from my person. The light grew, encompassing myself and all of the Dusks, and once it had grown as much as it could it came back into me. I stood back up, a long brown staff in hand. The staff was thin but strong, and it was topped with a spherical cage with a small indigo ball glowing within. The other end of the staff ended with a point and three short stick jutting out of one side, almost like a key.

"_Life Giver…"_

"_Life Giver…"_

One by one, each of the Dusks uttered the words, undoubtedly the name of the staff, and stood to bask in the staff's light. They each were coated in the indigo now, each with its own distinct arrangement of the color enveloping its person. They were all different now and beautiful for it.

"_What do we do now? What is our aim?"_ The questions came from Volpex, who despite the change in coloring still had the same thorny vines wrapping around his body.

In response, I looked out to the street where Riku had just disappeared, and smiled, letting the indigo light shine brighter. _"We find Sora and we bring everyone together again. We'll all be happy, us and Riku and the others, together. You'll see."

* * *

_

Yes, a slight change in thinking, I know, but my thinking has changed since I started writing this piece. I hope you all still like it!

As always, R&R!


	17. Chapter 17

Hello, my invisible, seemingly nonexistent fan base! I don't know how many of you actually follow my writings, but its fun to think that someone's listening.

I'm not one for 1-D characterization, as you all have probably learned at this point, so I'll be focusing a bit on developing some points along these lines for a while. Let me know what works and what doesn't.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, or anything for that matter, just this story by itself.

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Chapter 17: Moving Onward

Jen's PoV

Stupid Riku. Always pushing me around, trying his best to make me feel like I'm less than him. I'll just have to fix that, won't I?

After Fox shooed us away for his little meeting, Riku took him and me up to the roof of the hotel, giving us the perfect view of everything Fox was up to down below. Not that I spied on Fox or anything; I figured the farther I was from the edge of the roof, the better. I know, I can fly, so why be afraid of heights, right? Search me, but I still thought better safe than sorry. Riku, on the other hand, had no problem leaning over the edge as he tried to get a better idea of what was going on down on the ground.

"So, what's he up to down there?" Riku simply scoffed and kept looking, completely avoiding any eye contact. So I went for plan B: annoyance. I've seen guys like Riku before; nothing gets a rise out of him more than some "immature" stunt. "What's he up to, huh? Huh? Huh, huh, huh?" I reached over, just enough to get close without seeing over the edge, and was about to start poking him—when he spun around and grabbed my arm.

"Shut up, already," he hissed, digging deeper into my arm. I could feel his anger growing, and it took everything I had not to dish some back out at him. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Jen; you are here solely as a favor to Fox, and if it were up to me you'd still be lying in a pipe somewhere, so you don't get to play the stupid little brat, not with your track record. Either look for yourself or shut the hell up, don't expect me to do you any favors." He turned back to the scene below, whispering one last thing under his breath: "Not after what you did to Fox."

God, he really hated me, didn't he? I would've confronted him right then and there, knocked some sense into him, but he started freaking out, muttering to himself and leaning farther over the edge.

"What are you doing? What are you doing, Fox?" I hovered over his shoulder and looked down; Fox was…shaking one of those creepy things' hands! I mean, seriously? After the beating we got from them, why wasn't he kicking the crap out of 'em?

"What the hell is he doing?" Riku looked half ready to jump down and kill the both of them; his face was all twisted, it was like looking in a mirror. Suddenly, he whipped his head around to me. "Don't. Move. I'll be back." A blob of dark stuff grew out of nowhere to our left, and Riku jumped into it and disappeared. I waited a bit for him to show up again, but he didn't; I heard his voice down below as he started telling Fox off.

I managed to get up the guts to peek over the edge of the roof to see, and I couldn't believe it; the lovey dovey couple was practically having it out down there. Riku did most of the yelling, but after a while Fox just went and bit his head off. Since when did Fox have that much of a spine?

Anyway, just when it started getting good Riku turned away, which frankly on seemed like a slap in the face if you looked at Fox's reaction. Without any real ending that I could hear from up above, Riku just…ran off, circling to the other side of the building. Well great, the two have a spat and suddenly I'm hung out to dry? I didn't think so. Completely forgetting how high up I was, I took a running start and threw myself over the edge, letting the flaming pillar of red I'd picked up from those two boneheads soften my fall as I landed right in front of Riku.

"Go away, Jen, you don't want to mess with me right now." He tried to run past me, only to get knocked back by a few red flares. I swear I didn't mean to hit him quite so hard, but the red's kind of hard to control. Even now, I can't shape it into anything really solid, just flames.

"If you actually gave a damn about me at all, you'd know I'm on your side with this, so shut up and let me talk for once." He wasn't expecting that; he stopped running, but he still drew his blade out.

"What are you talking about?"

"Those freaks try and tear us apart, and Fox wants to hold hands and sing kumbiya? Screw that, I want as much to do with them as you do." He lowered his blade and drew it back in: a sign I was getting through to him. "So you can hate me as much as you want, but I'm sticking with you. You're the only guy around here who's got his head on straight anyway."

He lowered his head and closed his eyes, debating whether or not to force me to step aside. "Fine. You can come. I'll be needing the backup anyway."

At that, I let the red slip away and fade, and walked over to his side. "So…now that the dead weight's gone, where to?"

He flinched at that—maybe it was too soon—but he went right back to business. "We don't have any leads as to where Sora is, so I think we should just look around a bit more. There's a place here I spent a lot of time in, so we should probably head that way and see if it's still standing." He started walking forward down the path. "We'll started heading there and see where it takes us."

"Alright, fine. I'm good with that." I started to join him…when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked back towards the hotel and saw this bright light, indigo I think Fox called it? Whatever it was, it was brighter than anything I'd seen on this world before, except for that flash of green Fox made before. Did he…?

"Jen?"

"…Sorry, sorry. Coming now." I ran over to Riku and we set off to go, neither one of us looking back. Whatever that was, Fox was on his own now; he was a big boy now and, either way, he'd made his choice. Now he'd have to just deal with it.

* * *

Riku's PoV

Fox, you can be so stupid sometimes. Every Nobody I have ever run into, I've had to beat off with my blade within seconds of meeting. You can't expect the best out of something that isn't entirely human!

"Damn, you're starting to look like me."

"What?" We were walking along the streets, trying to find that one place in this entire maze, and Jen had been looking at me funny the whole time.

"Your colors. There's a lot of red and yellow in them right now…are you sure you're ok?"

I stopped walking for a moment and looked down at myself, straining to turn on the indigo vision. That should have been the first sign that something was wrong with me; it shouldn't have been so hard to shift into indigo mode, but I had to use all my concentration just to see some blurry shapes of colors. Still, what I did see was enough to scare me.

Twisting all around my chest was a mix of red and yellow, digging into my chest and spewing sparks everywhere. Just looking at it hurt like hell, and my heart, which was already beating quickly from the fight with Fox, began to burn in my chest.

"Uhhh…" I grabbed my chest and dropped to my knees. Now that the colors had rooted themselves in my heart, the pain was unbelievable. My heart was on fire, and it just kept beating faster and faster…

"_Give it to me."_

Before I could even respond—not that I could even speak through all the pain—Jen flew in front of me and forced her hand against my chest. Her hand was covered in red, and it seared my skin through my clothes, but after the initial shock had passed the pain began to recede. Jen slowly, and with as much care as she was capable, pulled the roots of red out of my chest and letting them dissolve into her hand. A minute later, the red was gone; all that was left were the scorch marks on my shirt. Everything else was gone, like it had never happened.

"Jen…what just happened? I-I've been angry before, even at Fox, but it never…"

"You probably have me to blame for that." She didn't look me in the eye as she talked, just stared at the wall of the building in front of her. A red glow came from her arms, looking desperate to escape. "Anger is contagious, and I've got it in spades." She pulled the red from her left arm out into her right, forming a large jagged dagger. "When you got angry at Fox, that little spark was all the excuse my red needed to break out of control and infect you. Now normally, I'd just keep it in me, but now that it's causing so much trouble, I'm gonna try something new."

She looked at her dagger, turn away from the wall—and whipped back around, sending the dagger flying into the wall. The dagger stuck, and while it began eating away at the concrete around it, nothing bad seemed to happen.

"Th…There. Out of my system." The dagger burned a hole in the wall and fell to the ground, dissolving into nothingness. "I can't hold on to the anger forever, so I might as well break some stuff getting it out, right?" She looked down at the red vapors, clenched her fists—and conjured up dozens of daggers, throwing them against the wall the minute they appeared. The sheer heat that they were generating was incredible; I had to push up against the other side of that narrow street just to avoid getting burnt. Jen didn't seem to notice though; she just kept throwing the daggers with all her might, screaming and screaming in pain as each one left her, until she broke clear through the wall to the inside of hotel.

The light spilling from the inside hall hit Jen and startled her, and she finally stopped throwing now that she didn't have any more daggers left. Jen just stared at the light, completely silent—and then she did something I never thought I'd see her do. She sank down to her knees, pressed her hands against the cold ground, and openly wept.

I…I didn't know what to do. How do you comfort someone who's been fighting something inside herself all her life, something you can't stop or hit or destroy? The best I could do was go and kneel beside her, patting her back as she cried.

"Shhhh, shhhh, it's ok, Jen. Just stop fighting, let it go." The patting seemed to help; she slowly began to regain composure, until she was no longer crying, just taking even breaths and staring at the ground blankly. "Feel better."

I…don't feel anything. The anger…it's not there anymore." The tone of her voice…I don't think she ever expected that to happen.

"It's alright, that's normal. You'll feel numb and empty for a while, but then you'll be able to feel again." I let her sit for a while, so she could get a bearing for what she was feeling. "Is anything coming to you?"

"Ye…Yeah. It is." She stood up, back straight and fists clenched. Despite her usual firm stance, her face, her smile revealed a whole new side to her. "I can feel…everything. I can see everything." She looked down at me, her eyes full of green and indigo. "I can see the yellow in you, and the indigo and the green and blue. My God, Riku, I've been missing out on so much. All this time…I've been so absorbed in my anger, I haven't been able to see or understand anything else." Suddenly, her head shot up like a hunting dog catching a scent. "Do you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"That rush of color on the other side of town…how can you not feel it? Still angry?" She grabbed my hand and pulled me down the street, floating on a surge of green all around her. _"C'mon, I'll show you."_

Next thing I know, we're flying down the many paths of the town, zipping in and out of alleys and intersections faster than I thought humanly possible. I couldn't even keep track of where we were in it all. It was all a blur of lights and signs, until we flew down a path ending in a bright light. The light completely enveloped us as Jen finally stopped and put me back down.

"_See? Here we are! What is this place?"_

Well, just as I thought, that old place was what we were looking for. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that we were standing on the edge of a huge crater, the one over which The Castle That Never Was used to fly. The place had changed, of course; without Xemnas's nothing power coursing through the walls, the actual castle had crashed and was in ruins at the bottom of the crater. It lay on its side like a fallen top, dilapidated and obviously completely abandoned. The windows were all broken, and whatever circuitry lined the walls seemed to have burnt out; their charred remains could be seen even from a distance like some ugly varicose veins. It looked horrible, but I couldn't help but smile at the thought that old thing was done harboring those Organization goons.

"See that castle down there? The really powerful Nobodies used that as their stronghold. The Organization, remember?"

Jen peeked her head over the edge to look. _"Yeah, I remember. Well, that thing isn't out of business yet—all of the colors are coming from inside."_

I thought that would be the case; where else could something evil enough to kidnap someone as good as Sora hide out? "Well, guess where we're heading? Three guesses, and the first two don't count."

* * *

_?_

_So, they've found me. Good. I'll be able to get to the other one through them._

_So, Sora, have you figured out why you're here? No? Well, I suppose I could give you a little hint..._

_Those feelings you've been feeling since you came here? Those random, heart wrenching, contradicting thoughts racing through your head at all time, just dieing to gain control? That's all me. I'm the one helping your true self free. And when you finally let loose, I'll have enough power to set in motion my grand design...

* * *

_

Let's see if anyone can take a guess: Who is our mysterious villain? What does he want? And why does he need Sora to get it? Send your guesses in a review, and we'll see who's closest to the target!

Aww, I hate seeing my OCs in pain, but it has to happen at some point or another. Hope it wasn't too painful to read, it was certainly painful to write.

So, as always, R&R!


	18. Chapter 18

Wow, suddenly more people are making this story a favorite. Maybe people do read this…thank you, **It's not that**, and **kaska245**, for the confidence boost. And to **Dawn of Dusk** too, for being the faithful reader she is. Please review again, I miss your reactions!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. All I own are my OCs, and this story in its isolated state.

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Chapter 18: Reveals and Revelations

Sora's PoV

I've gotta get out of here, I feel like my head is exploding. I'm gonna lose my mind if I stay here any longer.

For days, I had been kept in this one white cell, with nothing to do but stare at the walls and try to not let the never ending white get to me. I know he's watching me, whoever he is; I can feel his eyes on me, like a temperature change, every time he looks in. It's horrible; his voice is like ice, and every word that comes out of his mouth is meant to break me down, to get me to give in to the madness he's trying to instill in me. And then, just when I think he's given up and is going to let me go, he just stops talking, leaving to check on something else I guess, leaving me all alone to stare at these walls.

He won't win though. I'm stronger than this, I always have been. I'm the key that hold everything together, for God's sake; you don't get like that without some inner strength.

And yet…

Something has changed since I came here. At first, I just felt hopelessly alone, and I paced back and forth nonstop, trying to find a way out. Now though, I just sit here in the center of the room, eyes closed to get away from the white walls. I've been this way for hours, days, or maybe minutes; time stopped making sense a while ago.

That's not all though. For a while now, I've been thinking these…weird thoughts. It's like, once I stopped fighting and just stopped thinking in words, my head expanded to fill the white space, and now these weird phrases keep entering my head. All I have to do is keep my eyes closed and stop thinking, and they all just start coming to me…

_Who am I? What am I…here for?_

_Y'ever wonder what stars are? Where light comes from?_

_It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important._

_Is it that I'm not supposed to exist?_

_Ah, it's okay. You were probably just seeing things. It happens to all of us when we're afraid._

_It's just, I think I've been running away from the one question I've been wanting to ask…What's going to happen to me now? Just tell me that. Nothing else really matters anymore._

_I want…I want to be…with you two._

_I've got a better idea. How 'bout I destroy you both?_

_No one would miss me._

_What gives you the right to say that?_

I sat up and cradled my head. I couldn't get the thoughts to stop; they just kept coming and coming. What's happening to me?

_Please don't do this, Master! I'm not strong enough!_

_Tell me…Tell me why he picked you!_

_Please don't hold back…_

_No! My heart belongs to me!_

_Get out of my head!_

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

I jumped up, called out the Keyblade, and started slashing at whatever I could. These thoughts would go away, they had to go away. Where are they? There's nothing in here, it's just me! So GET. OUT. OF. MY. HEAD!

"_You're ready now."_

Him again. I whipped over to the door, the one that had remained closed ever since I got here. He always spoke through the door, never letting me see him. Well enough was enough. "What're you talking about? Show yourself!"

"_Hm…Very well."_ I jumped back as the door slid open, revealing my kidnapper. He was completely covered in a black cloak, and I couldn't see his face. Why couldn't I get those stupid black cloaks out of my life? _"It's time you learned the truth about the situation."_

"The truth? What truth? You bring me here, try and drive me crazy in some isolation cell, and now what, you're here to gloat? Well guess what; it won't work. I'm stronger that, and I'm busting out of here!" I tried to rush him, but before I could make contact he threw me across the room with a wave of his hand. The blow just drained the energy out of me, and I collapsed against the wall as he walked forward and knelt beside me.

"_You stupid little light boy. You have no idea what's happening, do you?"_ He leaned in and whispered in my ear, _"Let me tell you a little secret: You're heart is a muddled little mess, and those voices? They're the people trapped inside you. All I've done is left you alone with your thoughts long enough to give them a chance to rise to the surface."_

He then shifted in his stance, forcing his dark hooded face in front of his face. I still couldn't see what he looked like underneath, and I couldn't even try; I was still trying to process what he had just said. There are people…trapped inside me? I knew Roxas was inside me, but I thought he was at peace or something. And there are others? How? Are they…in pain? The concept was terrifying, and the fear I showed on my face obviously gave him some sort of sick pleasure.

"_Well, now that that's out of the way…do you know who I am? If not, I'm sure you know my other half by now."_ He took off his hood…and I stared at a dark reflection of myself, one with black hair and cold, golden eyes. _"Either way, I'm your master now. Come now, time to give your power to me."_

He summoned a brown, cracked Keyblade and thrust it into me, a blast of color and light resulting from the impact. I screamed, knowing that it was too late; I had lost before I had even begun to fight. The voices filled my head as the world around me faded in a mix of pain and mist.

I can still remember the last thing he said before it all faded away: _"Sora, Roxas, Xion, Ventus. Open your hearts, surrender them unto your new master, the master of all that will be: Vanitas, ruler of all worlds!"_ And his cackling swallowed the world whole.

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Fox's PoV

Volpex was right. This old castle had to be what I was looking for. The minute we reached the edge of the crater, it seemed to explode in a kaleidoscope of colors, literally every one I had ever seen and some I hadn't. Its sheer brilliance was amazing, but I couldn't focus on that; instead, I was attacked with the message that the colors brought with them as it permeated my very soul.

At this, the colors gave off once last burst before fading away into nothingness. Most of the Nobodies didn't take the assault very well; half of them began convulsing at the total sensory overload that resulted from the blast, while the other half either attended to the wounded or began twisting in the air, ready for a fight. Only Volpex remained unfazed; his proximity to me seemed to shield him from any side effects the colors could bring.

"_Volpex…does the word Vanitas mean anything to you?"_

He turned to me, a slight trickle of yellow running down the indigo vines around his arms. _"Yes. The greater Nobodies would whisper that name when discussing him, and only within the safety of the castle. It is said that the first of them, Xemnas, helped create the abomination that is Vanitas, and that even he would dare not trifle with him. It is said that he is…unbalanced, regarding his emotions. Insane, even."_

"_Insane, huh?"_ I jumped on my staff, riding it like a witch does a broom. I wasn't sure at first, but I think I'm growing to like this thing. _"Well, I'm sure we can handle insanity. What worries me is that he made that much color at one time…"_ I looked down at the castle, which while still intact emitted a soft rainbow glow out of its windows and holes. _"It doesn't matter. Sora is in trouble, we have to help him. Let's go."

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Yes, the villain finally revealed! I've been waiting SO long to do this chapter!

I haven't actually played BBS yet, so if I don't have the best grip on Vanitas' character, please let me know.

As always, R&R!


	19. Chapter 19

Welcome, my faithful readers! Today, we're going to have a little fun challenging you all by starting a little contest that I like to call, "Name that OC!"

Believe it or not, Volpex, Fox's helper Nobody and Nobody ambassador of sorts who was only meant to have a minor role, has been developed in my head to have a major role in what's to come. What's more, his past is deeply rooted in KH canon! So, here's the challenge: Guess Volpex's connection with past KH characters, and his overall past. I'll be putting in lots of foreshadowing and clues from here on out, so keep an eye out for anything and send your guesses, along with any other thoughts about the story so far, in a review.

But enough of my blabbing, on with the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, just this story.

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Chapter 19: Getting In

Fox's PoV

"_The front entrance has fallen into disrepair since The Superior faded back to nothingness. We will have to go to the Altar of Naught at the other end, and work our way down."_

The Superior? God, he's so formal, even by my standards. Why does Volpex always keep his guard up around me? He knows something…_"Right, right. Well…guess we should just fly down there and see how far we can get."_ I took a firm grasp of the Life Giver and jumped off the ledge, falling down to the crystalline surface of the crater below. It was a soft landing—the glowing, sparkling surface was like snow, or sand—and upon landing I looked up to see Volpex and the other Dusks twisting along the jagged edge to join me. As soon as we regrouped, we flew as a pack towards the top of the castle, now the lowest point since it had crashed. What seemed to be the floor once was now a sheer wall, a perfectly vertical surface with the way inside at the very top. The stairway inside was covered in glass, probably from the iron frame around it, and was spewing colors.

I turned back to the other Nobodies, ready with a plan to get…everything I was looking for. _"Please, I need you all to stay out here. The colors in this building are too strong; I don't want to find out what kind of damage they do to you all with heavy exposure. Just stay out here and watch for anyone approaching the castle's perimeter. If you see __anyone__, send off a spark of whatever colors you have; I'll know. Thank you very much, you are dismissed."_ As the Dusks all began to twist and slither away through the air, I grabbed Volpex by the shoulder and brought him back to my side. _"Volpex. I want you to come with me, in case we run into anymore Nobodies. Your translating could prove invaluable."_ See, I can be "professional" too.

"_As you wish."_ And with that, we flew up and into the building.

…

Boy, if you thought this place looked creepy before, you should see it now. Everything was in total disrepair, but the platforms, elevators, and basically everything that ran on nothingness was still operational. I think these machines must have had their own center of gravity or something because they hadn't fallen or tipped or anything; they just hung in the empty space amidst all the fallen cables and wall panels. Volpex and I flew past all of the obstacles without too much trouble, but it was still amazing to look at.

"_It was good of you to think of sending the others out on surveillance, Fox. It certainly allows us to search without worry of undue intervention."_

Undue intervention? Ok, it's time to figure out what this guy's deal is. _"Actually, Volpex, that's not why I did it."_ We were in a large room, bottomless except for the platforms floating around, and I stopped and rested on one of them, one that was made in such a way that I actually was able to sit on in despite it being completely vertical. Volpex had kept twisting along through the air without me, but after a moment he looked back and saw I had left him behind: being a Nobody means they don't take social cues quite as well, I guess. Or does it…?

"_I take it you stopped to tell me why you 'did it'?"_ He crouched down in front of me, head tilted to the side as though he didn't understand.

"_Volpex, it's just us here, you can drop the act."_

That caught him off guard; I swear he almost jumped, and he couldn't hide his nervous fidgeting. _"What do you mean?"_

"_I mean I know that you're more than you say that you are, and that you haven't been completely honest with me."_ I'll admit, I was enjoying calling him out; me getting the chance to show off my intellect doesn't happen often enough, and certainly not in a "parlor room" sense like this. _"Am I supposed to be impressed? You didn't even try to make a clever pseudonym."_ I stood up and started pacing in front of him, enjoying the moment even more than the kick I got out of practically walking up and down a wall._ "'Volpex'? Please, Riku told about the 'x-anagram' naming method. You didn't even twist the letters around. Some news for you, bud: My name is Fox, I know what 'volpe' means in Italian. What was option number 2, 'Zorro'?"_

Poor little Volpex kept looking away from me, trying to avoid eye contact like a little kid with his hands caught in the cookie jar. _"I…I apologize, Fox, it is just that…"_

I whipped around and looked him straight in where I thought his eyes were beneath his suit and said point blank, _"What? What could it be that's so important that you have to hide behind a fake name and some distant, emotionless words when you know full well that I'd help you all either way?"_ I may be the nice one compared to Riku or Jen, but this hurt._ "I have tried and tried to give you all my support, and what, you still don't trust me?"_

He shrank back from my yelling, thinking furiously on how to diffuse my anger no doubt. And yet, I could swear I saw some…fear wind its way around him? _"Please, calm down. I gave you a false name because I…I…"_

"_What?"_

He suddenly jumped up above my head, arms stretched out and contorted like some holy terror. He somehow managed to, in the blink of an eye, pull out my anger, create a set of flaming red claws around his own bound hands, and scream at the top of his lungs. **"Because ****I**** don't know it, ok? I don't know my own name, and they thought I'd be more credible if I knew something as pathetically simple as my own name, so I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you're stuck with the know-nothing idiot who doesn't remember a damn thing about anything!"** As soon as he stopped yelling, he realized what he had done, let the red claws disappear, and jumped down to the other side of the panel, huddled along the edge with his back to me. I could just barely hear him whisper, "I've never even met another Somebody before you."

He was a mess, and as for me, I…I…He could talk? Like actually talk, without the need for colors or anything, but like a real person? I should have been mad that he kept this from me too, but instead I just felt…sad for him. I hadn't noticed it before, but the indigo light had faded from my staff, and now began to shine brightly again. I walked over to him and sat down next to him, letting my legs hang off the edge of the panel.

"So…you don't have any memory? At all?"

He looked up, but still wouldn't look at me. "Pretty much. I've just been staying with those other Dusks outside, trying to figure out what to do next." He started to actually cry; I didn't know he could cry, but even through his suit I could hear him choking back the tears. "You don't know what they're like, Fox. They haven't had emotions for so long, they talk like that all the time, so distant and aloof. I've had work for so long so they wouldn't know I'm not like them, learning how they move, how they talk…and then you come along, and you make us feel again, only I don't know what to do with all of this color stuff, so I'm just scared to death of feeling, of not feeling, of showing my fear. It's too much, I just…"

I scooted over and put my arm around him, letting him sink into my chest as the yellow he had been holding in began to spill out. As he let all of his pain go, I started breathing in all of the yellow fumes that began to rise from his colors, and suddenly I could see it all; the lonely nights he spent without a memory or face or name to cling to, the relief of finding others like himself, the disappointment of realizing he would have to give up all individuality in exchange for their safety and a sense of purpose. All of this, without any true emotion to guide him out of this emptiness? It was a terrifying concept, and Volpex had been forced to live it for who knows how long.

"It's alright, Voly, I understand." I patted his shoulder just a bit as he started to regain a little composure. He managed to do so pretty well; he had only been sobbing a little bit to begin with, and now his shaking and sputtering had pretty much subsided. He stayed with his head pressed against my chest for a moment, perfectly still, then suddenly twisted his limbs around so in a moment he was standing at my other side.

"There's something you need to see. C'mon, I'll race you further in." He took a little green from me, wrapped himself in it, and jumped off the panel, flying away without any twisting or contorting towards the other side of the room. Well, at least he felt well enough to keep moving. I grabbed a firmer hold of my staff and raced after him.

I won't bore you with the details of the trip; you've all seen the castle, I'm sure. Just imagine it on its side, and you've pretty much got what I saw going through it. I didn't really get a good look at most of it anyway, until Volpex finally stopped in one chamber, a small room littered with pipes and several small panels, accompanied by what looked like broken tombstones.

Once we stopped flying, Volpex just stood tall in the center of the room, looking around at all the debris. "The other Nobodies call this the 'Proof of Existence'. It's where the major Nobodies, the Organization made these memorials to themselves, to make sure they were remembered at the very least for their power." He looked up and reached a long elastic arm to the ceiling, feeling the small tubes up above tenderly, almost with a sense of…nostalgia? Keep in mind, I didn't have much to go on; he still didn't make many colors of his own. "I think there's nothingness running through these pipes. Sure would explain why this place isn't tipped over, huh?"

I was relieved to hear him actually talking, letting some personality shine through, but I still felt in the dark; his coming clean had only opened up more questions. "How do you know so much about this place? This castle, this room even?"

"Oh. Yeah well, this is where I came from." He looked down at me, face still covered by the suit, making him for the most part unreadable. "First thing I remember, I'm standing in the middle of all this, thinking that I've lost something really important. Well, that, and a word." He slid a foot over to a single panel, the only one that seemed active. It was glowing with a soft blue color, and it was emblazoned it a symbol: two crossed Keyblades. "Roxas. Does that mean anything to you?"

Roxas! Wasn't that one of the names I heard when the castle exploded with color earlier? "Volpex…I think he's here."

At the sound of that, his head whipped away from the little tomb and looked at me. "He? It's a person, you know him?"

I smiled, glad to see him reacting so positively; I like to help people, not hurt them. "I don't know him myself, but I have a feeling he has something to do with all of this. Find the source of all these colors, and we'll probably find him too. And if you know his name, he might know something about you too."

"Yeah…yeah, you're right. Maybe he knows who I am. Maybe he knows my name!" He seemed genuinely happy, and hopeful—until he stopped for a moment, and sank down to his long slender legs and crossed his arms. "But…how can he know who I am? I look just like any other Dusk, he won't recognize me."

That, I wasn't sure I could help him with. It's true, he looked just like any other Nobody; the only way I could distinguish him from the others was how his colors made those thorns that wrapped around his chest and arms. "Well…maybe you could try unzipping your hood? If your this aware of yourself, you might still have your old face, and he could tell from that."

He thought about that for a moment, but in the end just shook his head. "No. I don't want to give him false hope. If seeing this Roxas guy doesn't trigger anything, and he remembers who I was before…I don't want to hurt him." His head stayed perfectly still as he thought of what to do next. "Still, better have some way of distinguishing myself from those Dusks…Fox, I need a favor."

"Yes?"

He raised his hands and looked at them, contemplating their bonds; like all Dusks, each of his hands had three slender fingers bound by two black bands to form a solid whip, well suited for battle. "Your staff…if it's got anything to do with those Keyblades, then they can undo locks and bonds. I want you to unlock my hands."

I was taken aback by the request; I had never done anything like this before. "Are—are you sure? I mean, I don't know what I'm doing here, and you fight with your hands, right? I—"

"It doesn't matter, I've got your colors now. I'm not gonna walk around here looking like some Dusk drone, I need something to set me apart. Just do it, ok?"

"Oh—Ok, here goes then." I took the Life Giver in both hands and pointed it at Volpex's hands, which he held up as though they were in chains. At first nothing happened, and I thought that maybe I couldn't do this, I couldn't help him. But just as I was about to give it up, an indigo spark shone out of the tip, and in a second, I was raised up into the air, grasping the staff as though it were a shovel I was about to dig into the earth with. Volpex's hands began to shine with a white light as my staff gathered up some indigo light—and shot it out in a single beam, impaling both of his hands in a single shot. Volpex screamed in pure agony, and as soon as the light subsided he fell to the ground and held his hands close to his chest, shuddering in pain.

"Oh my God, Volpex, I-I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to—are-are you hurt, or—"

"It's fine, it's fine. Pain's—ungh!—Pain's already goin' away."

After a moment of struggling to hold back any cries of pain, he looked down at his hands and brought them out into the open. His suit was seared from the light, and his hands were still giving off puffs of indigo smoke, but it worked; the black bands were gone, and his long spindly fingers hung limply as they separated, like a spider's legs. They were like bony thorns themselves, yet once Volpex had flexed them a bit, they seemed just as flexible as the rest of him. He got back up to his feet and practiced swiping them, creating a whooshing sound with each swing.

"It's…it's amazing! I-I can bend my fingers, I can move them!" He looked at his new claws and then looked up at me. "Thank you, Fox."

I just smiled, mounted my staff, and drifted towards the room's exit. "Don't mention it. Now let's see if we can find Sora, and maybe your Roxas friend too. I've got a feeling things are looking up, for both of us.

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Vanitas' PoV

"_You've been here quite a while, Sora. Your friends aren't coming, you must know that by now."_

My back was to him as I paced back and forth through the cell. I knew he'd spill his guts in a moment; I'd pulled that pathetic little boy open once and played with his inner selves, and I could do it again in a heart beat; he knew that. In fact, all of him knew.

For the past hour, I had been trying to coax these goodie two-shoeses to give me what I needed. The first time I had split him open, it gave me exactly what I was looking for; the three beings inside him were brought to the surface. Now, I had them perfectly paralyzed; the four of them were laying side by side against the cell wall, none of them completely solid, but instead all of them like ghostly apparitions. It made sense; they all shared a body, and as long as I kept them half split and not completely separate, they would stay like this: immobile, in indescribable amounts of pain, and completely under my control. Just the way I like it.

"_I __promise__, just tell me what I want to know and I'll put you all back together again."_

The lie tasted like candy coming off my tongue, but they didn't seem to be buying it. The smallest one, a little girl with black hair and a black cloak managed to hold out long enough to yell, _"No! I won't be deceived agai—ahh!"_, before passing out from the pain again. The others merely held their tongues and closed their eyes, futilely resisting my attempts to keep them split. My other in particular had his fists clenched. I swear, that weak little light bug should have gone down long ago…

"_Well, as fun as it is watching you four suffer, I __am__ on a tight schedule, so…"_ I whipped around, raised my broken Keyblade, and flung it against the wall. The blade stuck right at the place where Sora and Ventus's arms crossed each other, creating two wonderful screams of agony as the blade forced their arms to meld together. Of course, the conventional pain of being stabbed in the arm played into it very well, and the sight was a masterpiece, one worthy of my namesake.

"_Where is she?"_

Roxas was the first to react of course, seeing as he still had both arms intact. He shot me a dirty look and spat, _"We don't __know__ where she is. Now let us—"_

"_Liar!"_ I pulled my Keyblade out of the wall and plunged it into Roxas' arm. His shrieks were music to my ears as I dragged the weapon down the length of his leg. _"I know she's close to Sora, you must have seen her at some point. Now where is she? Where is the other one? Where is Kairi?"_

_

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And there you have it! Gosh, that was a long one. Well, the clues are out there, please send in your guesses. Who is Volpex?

Even if you don't want to guess, as always...R&R!


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